I am working on a help screen, and am trying to explain in very simple terms the difference between using the exact match (equal sign), and literal text (quotation marks) in find mode. I looked in a book, and it started talking about how Filemaker indexes fields, etc. I am looking for a way to explain this very simply to real novices.

OK.

1) Talk real slow. Or if it's an on-line help screen -- type real slow using only one finger.

<giggle>

I've found the quotation marks (literal text search) useful only if the search string begins or ends with a space. However it doesn't seem to hurt any other search I can remember using it in.

The "exact match" search (=) gets FMP to assume that the search string is a whole word. Normally it looks for the search string inside words as well.

The "field content match" search (==) gets FMP to assume that the search string is the entire contents of the field.

I taught this stuff just this morning.