User manual

Chapter 2 | Using databases 33
Finding text and characters
Search for text in text fields, or in calculation fields that return a text result.
Unless you search for phrases and exact matches, the field can contain other values in addition
to the one(s) you specify, and the values can be in any order. For example, typing hotel in a
field named Accommodation finds records for Hotel, Discount Hotel, and Hotel, Luxury.
To find Type this in the field Examples
Words that start with specific Roman
characters (works with fields that use
any language except Japanese)
The characters Chris Smith finds Chris Smith,
Smith Chris, Chris Smithson, and
Smith Christenson
Words that start with Japanese
Hiragana, Katakana, or Kanji
characters
The characters between = and * =小田* finds 小田, 小田山, and 小田川
A phrase or sequence of characters
that match when they are the first
characters in a word (match phrase
from word start)
The literal text (characters),
including spaces and
punctuation, between double
quotation marks (")
"Marten and Jones Interiors"
finds Marten and Jones Interiors but
not Jones and Marten Interiors
", Ltd." finds all companies with ",
Ltd." in the name, but not those
without the comma
“Spring” finds Springville but not
ColdSpring Harbor or HotSpring
Words with one or more unknown or
variable characters (any one
character)
One wildcard character (@) for
each unknown character
Gr@y finds Gray and Grey
@on finds Don and Ron but not Bron
Invalid characters in a text field ? Invalid characters display as blank
characters
Note To find the ? character, search
for "?"
Digits in a text field (any one digit) A # character for each digit # finds 3 but not 30
## finds 30 but not 3 or 300
#3 finds 53 and 43 but not 3
Words with zero or more unknown or
variable text characters in a row (zero
or more characters)
* for all unknown characters Jo*n finds Jon
and John
J*r finds Jr. and Junior
*phan* finds Phan and Stephanie
Operators or other non-alphanumeric
characters, such as punctuation or
spaces
The literal text (characters),
including spaces and
punctuation, between double
quotation marks (")
"@" finds @ (or an email address, for
example)
"," finds records containing a comma
" " finds three spaces in a row
A character with special meaning,
such as the find operators recognized
by FileMaker Pro: @, *, #, ?, !, =, <, >,
" (escape next character)
\ followed by the special
character
\"Joey\" finds "Joey"
joey\@abc.net finds the email
address [e-mail]
Words with accented characters The literal text (characters),
including spaces and
punctuation, between double
quotation marks (")
"òpera" finds òpera but not opera
(òpera without quotation marks finds
both òpera and opera)
Partial phrases, a sequence of words
or characters (match phrase from
anywhere)
Characters, punctuation, and
spaces between double quotation
marks ("); use * to find this text in
the middle of a longer text string
*"son & Phillips" finds Johnson
& Phillips and Paulson & Phillips