I have a List View with 14 fields of which 5 are:

Enquiry No; Enquiry Date; Company Name; Site Details; Completed by

The header has 14 global fields of which 5 are:

gEnquiry No; gEnquiry Date; gCompany Name; gSite Details; gCompleted by

The user needs to be able to fill any one or more of the global header fields and see the list reduce to the record, or group of records, they're looking for.

Many searches would result in a single record, eg: if they put in just an enquiry number, they would see just one record.

But they might search by Company Name, find the list to be too long and add a keyword in Site Detail and/or between 2 Enquiry Dates and/or Completed by before searching again.

Currently I have a fairly complex button-based script that's not ideal. Better than that, I can put a script trigger on each field that invokes a search on that field, but I really need it to consider the content of the other fields in any combination (and there’s a huge number of possible combinations).

Any idea how to achieve this?

Currently I have a fairly complex button-based script that's not ideal. Better than that, I can put a script trigger on each field that invokes a search on that field, but I really need it to consider the content of the other fields in any combination (and there’s a huge number of possible combinations).

I understand where you're coming from but I would instead present the User a clearly identified FIND layout with fields they can search and provide training on FM search capabilities. It is easier to add fields to a FIND layout than to modify scripts or triggers ... just a thought. :^)

Thanks for the swift reply. You are right that script triggers are not the way to go. I do have a specific List View layout popping up as a second window for the very purpose of searching the database.

I have been trying to match as near as possible an existing Access database (being retired because it is not cross-platform). I think my error is in trying that too closely, completely ignoring the way I would have designed it if I were starting from scratch. It's goodbye to the global header fields!