A bizarre bug has appeared in one of our databases. When doing a find on emails (to correct or update them), the find consistently produces no matches unless the "@" symbol is removed.

For example, say the email address "[email protected]" bounces so a search is made for that email address so it can be corrected or flagged as bad.

The field for email addresses is a simple text field, nothing fancy.

If a search is made in the email field on "[email protected]" it will find no matches. Unless the "@" symbol is removed no matches will be found. But "fred" or "fred emails.com" will return a correct match.

I realize that the symbol "@" is a search operator, but I don't recall this ever happening before. 

Do other people have this problem? 

Any simple fixes? I suppose I could simply create another field for searching emails with a different symbol substituted for "@", but it seems clumsy and inelegant.

Or is the database simply corrupted?

 

PS: This is in FM 11 Advanced on a Mac running OS 10.6.8.

 

@ is a special character yes and it needs to be prefaced with

 

So like:  [email protected]

Yeah, adding "" will work. Its about the same amount of work as simply removing the "@".

 

Considering the common use of "@" in email addresses, perhaps FM should use a different symbol.

You should read about the operators. There are more than the @ Sign and all of them need to be Escaped under certain circumstances. 

I'm familiar with the operators but with "Escaped." Is this a way to disable them when executing a find?

Oops. Should have read "but NOT with "Escaped"