Creating a drop down list to "find" data

[Orchid28]

I want to make a drop down list to "find" data rather than "input data". So when I click on the drop down list and select a topic, it will search for that topic and all the data that has that topic will come up. The reason why I am doing this because my boss will not remember all the data she needs to find so if there are over 100 people in 20 different cities she wont remember all the 20 cities we have to look for. So it would be easier to have a list of those 20 cities on the drop down list and she can just click on one of them like Los Angeles and people living in Los Angeles will come up.

So how can I create a Find/Search drop down list?

[David McQueen]

I want to make a drop down list to "find" data rather than "input data". So when I click on the drop down list and select a topic, it will search for that topic and all the data that has that topic will come up. The reason why I am doing this because my boss will not remember all the data she needs to find so if there are over 100 people in 20 different cities she wont remember all the 20 cities we have to look for. So it would be easier to have a list of those 20 cities on the drop down list and she can just click on one of them like Los Angeles and people living in Los Angeles will come up.

So how can I create a Find/Search drop down list?

Lets say you want to search on the field "CompanyName".

1. Create a value list based on the contents of that field called "ExistingCompanyNames".

2. Create a separate layout for searching and script the search so that they go to that layout when entering find mode.

3. In that Search layout use the "ExistingCompanyNames" value list on that field using the drop down list option.

HTH