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FIND The power of your database

Written by: Paul Cruse

Article Overview: A FileMaker database is an excellent place for storing mountains of information. But what about when you want to get it out again? What’s more - how do you accomplish that quickly and efficiently - and preferably all in one hit? In this article we will show you just how you can pull out even obscure sets of data, and make sure your data and your FileMaker database is really working for you...

FIND The power of your database

So you’ve got your
database and it’s just what you
asked for. It’s got plenty of check
boxes and radio buttons and
pulldown lists and you’ve
categorised your clients and
contacts until you are blue in the
face... Now what?
You want to send a marketing
piece to a select group of people, or
find out how many profitable calls
have been made in the Midlands
area as compared to those in
Scotland and Devon, but you want
to exclude anyone who is in the
Tourism industry… Sounds simple,
but a lot of people grind to a halt
when faced with this kind of data
interrogation.
FileMaker Modes*
Whilst adding information to your
client records in the database, you
would have been in Browse Mode
There are four different ‘modes’ in
FileMaker – Browse Mode – which
is the data entry mode – this
allows you to look through the
records and add /edit/ delete data.
Layout Mode - which is basically
where you create the different
ways of viewing the data (called
Layouts) such as Forms, Entry
screens, Labels, Reports.
Preview Mode - This is the one that
shows you what something will
look like when it prints.
Last but not least - Find Mode –
which allows you to do searches
on the data. This is the one we will
be concentrating on now.
When you start using FileMaker
you would be forgiven for thinking
that you can only do one find at a
time. For example, “Find all
companies in the leisure industry
in Scotland”. Whilst this is still a
powerful thing to be able to do,
did you know that you can build
up a search with some pretty
complicated requests?
How about “Find all companies in
the leisure industry in Scotland,
and all companies in the leisure
industry in North East England,
but omit any that have fewer than
10 staff”? Simple when you know
how!
How do I tell it what I want?
Let’s imagine you have a database
that has fields for contact names,
companies, addresses, some simple
industry categories, regional areas
and number of staff at a company.
Let’s break down this search and
see how it can be done...
• Start by making sure that the
Status Bar is available on the left
of the screen. (See Status Bar
image for details of making it
visible.)
• Go into Find Mode by clicking
View then select Find Mode.
• Select “Leisure”in your Industry
categories and type “Scotland”
into your Area field - that’s
Request 1“find all companies in
the leisure industry in Scotland”.
• You may have noticed that by
going into Find Mode, the
Records menu changes to
Requests.
• Go to the Requests menu and
select “Add New Request”.
• Notice how the status bar has
“Requests 2” at the top.
• For your next find request,
select “Leisure”in your Industry
categories and select “NE” in
your Area field - that’s Request
number 2 “and all companies in
the leisure industry in North East
England”.
• Add a New Request again - but
this time select the “Omit” check box
on the status bar and select 1-10 in
the Staff box - that’s Request 4 “but
omit any that have fewer than 10 staff”.
• Now press the Find button on the
Status Bar or the enter key, and it
will find your chosen set.
If you make a mistake or if you want to
add to your find, you can go to
Records, Modify Last Find from Browse
Mode and it will show you the last set
of find requests.
Saving Finds
Once you have taken the time to do this
complex find, you may want to save the
search criteria so that you can use it
again in the future. Once a Find is
saved, it can be performed at any point
in the future and give you a new set of
records based on the current data in the
database. The way to save the Find is:
• Perform the find that you want.
• Immediately afterwards go to the
Scripts menu.
• Click on ScriptMaker.
• Type in a name for your script into
the box titled Script Name at the
bottom of the screen.
• Click on Create.
• Scroll down the list on the left until
you see the Sort/Find/Print options.
• Choose Perform Find.
• Double click Perform Find so that it
appears in the big white box on the
right.
• Leave the default options on for
Restore, Replace Found Set.
• Click OK.
• Click DONE.
If you now go back to the scripts menu,
you will see the script you have created
at the bottom of the list, and if you
select it, it will perform the same find
every time!
Useful Symbols
Did you know that when doing a find,
you can also make use of the set of
symbols offered in the Status Bar?
These symbols help you add even more
power to your searches.
For example, using an * (asterisk) in a
field finds Zero or more unknown
characters. So for example, if you
wanted to find someone called John but
did not know if they were on the
database as Jon, Jonathan or John, your
search could be jo*n and the database
would find you Jon, Jonathan and John.
The right hand column explains the use
of symbols in more depth.
Further help...
There are even more interesting ways of
manipulating data which you can read
in the FileMaker manual in the chapter
on Finding and Sorting Information,
but in the meantime we hope this has
inspired and helped you to get more
out of your database.
In the next newsletter we will be giving
you more helpful hints on how to create
and sort reports “on the fly”, and how
to add scripts to buttons.

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Article Tags: blue in the face, check boxes, data entry, data layout, devon, different ways, entry screens, industry categories, interrogation, labels, layout mode, leisure industry, midlands area, north east england, powerful thing, preview mode, radio buttons, regional areas, select group, tourism industry



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