HelP: Searching multiple parameters

[LERC Assistant]

[Attached is a working FileMaker 7 file, in a very early stage!]

I want the user to be able to search the database by specifying 3 different cities, states, and/or codes. Right now, once the user selects a 'NAISC code', for example, all of the fields are entered. I'm not sure how to fix this. Can anyone help? Thanks.

ipv.zip

[aaa]

If you want to serch by different cities or by different values in one field you must creat few records in find mode for searching.

[LERC Assistant]

Could you be a little bit more specific? I appreciate the help greatly, however, I'm so new to the program that general tips are hard to follow. Thanks.

[SlimJim]

I have tried to look at your file but it is not possible to examine any details since user access prevents looking at layout mode, scriptmaker, Define database etc.

If you want detailed help you will have to upload a file which it is possible to dig into.

Regarding aaa's post it is possible that for few record you should read new record.

[LERC Assistant]

Hello 'SlimJim'

Sorry about that, I went ahead and changed the guest account to 'full access'. Just sign in as guest and hopefully this should allow you the privileges required to help me.

I appreciate your time.

second_try.zip

[SlimJim]

That is working OK now and I have had a look at the file.

I am not totally sure what exactly you want to do here but lets have a look at the first screen. The three fields NAICS Type1; NAICS Type 2 and NAICS Type 3 are identical which is why when you select from the first drop-down you get the same value in each one. If you are trying to search for three separate values: Type 1 or Type 2 or Type 3 then either your user has to set-up three separate find requests or you have to script the find to set-up three find requests.

However, before we get into that I have to say that you really need to think about the structure of this file and you definitely need more than one table. For example you have four Director fields and the set of four is repeated 20 times. Looking at the actual data most of these fields, in fact most of the fields in the file are empty.

It looks as if you are running a company/employee style of contact database and it would seem that all the named people belong to a company in your file. At the very least I would say you need a separate contact table with

ContactID

CompanyID (relating them to a company in the ipv table)

Status (Contact, Executive, Director)

Title

First name

Last name

Gender

This would significantly cut down on the number of fields in your main table and also avoid you having to make a prior decisions as to how many of each type of contact you might have in a company.

There is also a collection of numbered fields Sic, Description, AD Size, Yr. I don't know what these are for but they should be in a separate related table.

This has nothing to do with your searching and feel free to ignore these comments if you wish.

Back to the searching. From your layout I guess you are trying to find data matching:

from 1 to 3 NAICS Types, an employee size, a city and a state. I think the simplest way of doing this is to view the layout in Table mode this means a find request is a single row in your table, when you have filled in one row select Requests - Add New Request and then fill in a second row and do this as often as you like. You will then get all records which match one or more of the rows.