I've run into an interesting problem with the search routine I'm building into a solution. Say I have a record whose email field has the value "[email protected]" If I perform a search for "[email protected]" no records are found. But if I only search for "a.com" it finds the record. I know the problem is with the "@" but I'm not sure how to get around this, since users will want to be able to search for email addresses using the complete address.

The @ character is actually a special operator character in find mode, but that isn't the reason your find is not working.

To get it to work, you should go into define fields, select the email address field and click "Options...". Then go to the storage tab and look down the bottom at where it says "Default language for indexing and sorting text". Click on the drop-down list of options and select ASCII. Click OK to accept the change. and then 'Done' to return to the database.

Now go try your sort and you should find it is working.

Why this works is because the @ symbol is not an indexable character in most of the indexing paradigms, but all characters are indexable under ASCII.

That probably means if I have any fields containing Chinese text that I want to search through, I'll have to change this parameter to ASCII for them as well, right?

--I just tested it and fmpro finds the chinese text no problem.