What kind of script do I use to find all names that begin with a letter of the alphabet?

What I want to combine to letters... is it possible?

"...to find all names that begin with a letter of the alphabet?"

Use the asterisk (*) wildcard; e.g. to find all names beginning with letter "a" you would enter a* in the field to be searched.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Keith M. Davie:

"...to find all names that begin with a letter of the alphabet?"

Use the asterisk (*) wildcard; e.g. to find all names beginning with letter "a" you would enter a* in the field to be searched.

---

Incorrect. This will find any record in which the letter "a" is followed by another character (I did a search using this, and the name "Mary Ann" was in the found set).

The only way I can think of off the top of my head (and there's not much left on the top of my head) is to create a calc field: Left(Name, 1), and then do a search in that field for the letter "a".

this will probably work, however in a large database, you don't want to be performing search on unindexed calculation fields.

You could create a script that use the string functions...

You can then set up your serch value in the script, or ask user input during the script.

Sorry dan. I made an assumption that he had just one name in his field since he did not specify more than one. Could have been a "last name" field. One can always concatenate.

To find Ann Marie and not Mary Ann , perform your find using ==a*