I have to perform searches on a text field that may contain a lot of words.

Should I turn indexing off ?

FM help says that filemaker indexes only the first 20 chars of each word up to 60 chars.

I tried to test it: I put a lot of words (far more than 60 chars) in a text field (indexed) on some records. FM is still able to find a record even if the word searched is the last one in the field.

Why?

When indexing is on, FM have to update the index each time a record is edited, deleted, created.

May this affect performance?

Thanks in advance...

Paolo

it is 20 characters of EACH word.

so

"averylongwordwithoutspaces, averylongwordwithoutpause, anotherword"

indexes as:

averylongwordwithout

anotherword

Just have alook at Insert -> from Index... and you will see.

it is 20 characters of EACH word.

so

"averylongwordwithoutspaces, averylongwordwithoutpause, anotherword"

indexes as:

averylongwordwithout

anotherword

Actually Filemaker will NOT index the first 20 characters in a word, it will index words up to 20 characters in leangth and lines up to 60 characters in length. As soon as it hits 21 characters in a word or 61 characters in a line it will STOP indexing that field for that record. Subsequent words or lines will NOT be indexed.

so if i the field's content may not be indexed I have to turn indexing off to preserve find functionality?