search in portal where

[ogbill]

I am getting inconsistant results when searching in an invoice items description field where " is used to denote inches. If I remove the " in the search phrase I find all my records.

The user creates the invoice line item by choosing from a drop down value list that is from the product description. Creating the line items works fine. When in find mode the same layout and the same drop down value list is used so the search text is the same. In some searches the result is no records are found. If I remove the " from the search criteria the records are found. This problem started after migrating from v6 to v8.

It would be nice for the users to be able to continue to use the drop down value list when searching. Any ideas?

Edited June 8, 2006 by Guest

[Søren Dyhr]

That an awful lot of storage you're using on single quote's! I would prevent storing styling data in the field at all, when it can be accomplished as shown above.

One problem though if you mix inches and feet in the same field? I have an uncle making turbines for GE and he says that inside the plant are they bound to use metric notation although when he leaves the plant for the outside society and say talk fishing with his buddies is it in feet and inches! But here in EU has legisation overruled anglosaxon preferences...

--sd

[ogbill]

Thank you for the reply but you may have missed my concern. The quote " is used in a text field that describes the part. Example: Lamp Shade, 12"

Where " is used to denote inches in the description. When the client searches in the description field of line items searching for Lamp Shade, 12" it sometimes comes up with no records found. When the " is removed from the search string the records are found just fine. This search used to work in FMP v6. Now that I have upgraded them to FMP v8 this problem has inconsistantly appeared. They are using the same drop down menu to fill in the search that they used to populate the items field so I know it is not a typo issue.

For now I have them removing the " so the search will work but like most users, they want it the way it was before...they do not want to add another step to what was a one step search.

[comment]

The quote is a "character with special meaning" when defining search criteria, so it needs to be escaped. See Help > Finding, sorting, and replacing data > Finding records > Finding text and characters.

[ogbill]

I know it has special meaning and that was the first thing I looked into when the clent brought this problem up. What is odd is that it worked in v6 and now that I am in v8 the problem has cropped up.

What does escaped mean?

[comment]

It means you have to to precede the quote (or any special character) with the backslash character (a.k.a the escape character).

To find [color:green]Lamp Shade, 12", your criterion needs to be [color:green]Lamp Shade, 12"

[ogbill]

Thanks, Good suggestion. This will work if I automate the query. It may be just as easy for now for the users to remove the " after they use the drop down item list to paste in the query.

If this is a limitation in FMP8 I may have to remove the " from the item descriptions or create another field for them to use when searching that does not have " in the text.

[comment]

I would go with a scripted find, where users enter the criteria into global fields (in Browse mode), and the script takes care of escaping the special characters.

One thing that seems odd: if you use a value list, why is a find necessary? Couldn't you just go to the related record/s?

[LaRetta]

I would also caution about smart quotes here. I would turn it off in File > Options > Text tab. If you get a mix of the two, it could cause you problems later.