Quick Tips for Finding Records in FileMaker
FileMaker Pro really excels at its capacity to find records in your business application.
First, there is the standard Find command, which everyone is well aware of:
– From the ‘View’ menu, choose ‘Find Mode’ (or Command-F in Mac; Control-F in Windows)
Second there is the right-click Find options:
– By doing a right-click on your mouse (when your cursor is in a field), or a control-click to bring up the contextual menu from your mouse, you will see options such as ‘Find Matching Records’, ‘Constrain Found Set’, ‘Extend Found Set’.
What do each of these mean?
‘Find Matching Records’ – if the field you click in happens to have the name ‘Smith’ in it, selecting this will find all records matching ‘Smith’. So this is a very quick method, using the right-click to find every record matching whatever is in the current field.
‘Constrain Found Set’ – typically when you do a Find, FileMaker will search across all the records which you have in the particular table you are searching on. But a ‘Constrain Found Set’ will start with just your current found set. So if you have 500 customers, but you are only looking at the 25 ‘smiths’, for example, a Constrained Find will now just search among those 25 Smiths. Maybe you just want to find any ‘smith’ who lives in Minnesota. Then you would go to the State field and if it had “MN” in it already, then do a right-click and choose ‘Constrain Found Set’ to find all Smiths in MN.
‘Extend Found Set’ – this is basically the opposite. If you are working with a found set of records, choosing this with a right-click option will expand beyond the few records in your found set, to find all records which match and additional criteria, while still retaining the original 25 records you may have been working with.
So, with just a few clicks of the mouse and some strategic thinking you can do an amazing amount of good analytical work with your company records using the FileMaker Find Command options.