Once you’ve mastered multiple requests, you’re ready to move on to the next Find Mode gem: Find Symbols. Using these bits of punctuation, you can tell FileMaker, when it goes about matching records to your find criteria, to be a little more flexible, or a little more strict. In this article, you’ll learn about each one.
Find Symbols are special punctuation you type right in to Find mode. FileMaker doesn’t just match these symbols directly. Instead, they serve as hints to FileMaker about how you want things to match. Luckily, you don’t have to just know what these symbols are. You can see them all in the status area when you’re in Find mode:
FileMaker helpfully shows you all the avaialble symbols. But the descriptions here are a little terse. No worry. Read on.
The Symbols pop-up menu lists every valid Find mode symbol, along with a description of what it does. Chances are you’ve used a few of these before, even if you didn’t know they were called Symbols. For instance, most FileMaker users know you can put something like this in a date field in Find mode:
8/11/1976…12/29/2001
When you do, your found set will include all records whose date value is between August 11th 1976 and December 29th, 2001.
The Range Symbol
As you just saw, the … symbol — better known as the “range” symbol — lets you specify a range of values to match. It isn’t limited to dates. You can provide a range of numbers in a number field:
22…36
Or a range of times:
9:00 AM…5:00 PM
You can even provide a range in a text field:
Adam…Bernard
FileMaker thinks about text ranges alphabetically. In other words, if you put all your names in alphabetical order, the range above would include every name between Adam and Bernard.
It is important to remember that the range symbol is inclusive: A value that matches either end exactly will be included in the found set.
Comparison Symbols
The next-most-common symbols are <, ≤, ≥, and >. These symbols are like the range symbol with only one end. For example, to find everyone born after Star Wars came out:
>5/25/1977
These symbols are pretty self explanatory: “Greater than 5/25/1977.” Some people prefer using the range symbol instead of ≤ or ≥. For example, this will find every order placed after January first:
1/1/2007…
Exact Match
One of the most useful symbols is =, or the “exact match” symbol. Normally, FileMaker is pretty forgiving about field matches when performing a find. For instance, if you put San in the City field, FileMaker will consider each of these a match:
- San Francisco
- Santa Clara
- San Bernardino
- San Jose
- Rancho Santa Margarita
- …basically every city in California.
If you want to be technical, FileMaker does a word-based prefix match, meaning if any word in the field starts with the value you type in your find request, FileMaker considers it a match (see “Rancho Santa Margarita” in the list above).
The “exact match” symbol lets you be more specific. If you use this find criterion:
=San
FileMaker will still match San Francisco but it won’t match Santa Clara. With =, it only matches whole words.
Field Content Match
If you want to be even more specific, you can use the “field content match” symbol: ==. This little buddy tells FileMaker you know exactly what you’re looking for, and it only finds records where the entire field matches your find criterion exactly.
For example, if you did your San search this way:
==San
Then you’d only find people in the city of San. (More likely you’d find nothing, since San isn’t a city.) You would use this symbol when you are looking for something very specific and a normal search finds too many records.
Wildcards
Going the other direction, sometimes you want FileMaker to be less restrictive. FileMaker has three so-called wildcard symbols (think Jokers Wild not Call of the Wild):
*: zero or more characters@: one character#: one digit
These symbols stand in for data in the field. For example, if you want Cities that end with “son” you can do a search like this:
*son
That search will find the mythical city of Son (sister to the city of San), as well as:
- Tucson
- Wilson
- Orson
The * symbol will match any number of letters or numbers. It will even match no characters (that’s why *son finds the city of Son). The @ symbol, on the other hand, matches exactly one character. Try a search like this:
Sant@
And FileMaker will find:
- Santa Clara
- Santo Domingo
But it won’t find “Sant” because the @ symbol expects exactly one character (not zero or one).
Finally, the # symbol works like @ but is only matches a numerical digit. This find:
##
Will match only two-digit numbers.
Literal Text
All these special symbols might leave you feeling a bit worried: What if you don’t want to discombobulate FileMaker’s finding. Instead, you actually want to find an @ sign? Believe it or not, another symbol comes to the rescue: The “literal text” symbol. Just put your punctuated find criteria in quotes:
“mr_magoo@sixfriedrice.com”
When FileMaker sees those quote marks, it dutifully ignores the symbols inside. In fact, this is just what you should do if you’re searching for an email address.
Duplicates
The most esoteric find symbol is !: the “duplicates” symbol. You don’t put this next to any text. Instead, you put it in a field all by itself in Find mode. FileMaker will then find every record that has duplicates in that field. In other words, if your database has two Andy’s and no other duplicate first names, if you perform a find with ! in the First Name field, FileMaker finds both Andy’s but leaves everyone else out. If you later add a second Vincenzo, it will find both Andy’s and both Vincenzo’s.
Today’s Date
The // symbol is really just shorthand to save you some typing. (Truthfully, it is also useful when scripting, but we’ll get to that in a future article.) When you put // in a find request, FileMaker acts just like you had meticulously typed out today’s date. To find every invoice due today, just bounce to Find mode, pound // in the Due Date field, and press Enter.
You can, of course, combine this symbol with others:
# find every invoice due after today
>//
# find every event between now and christmas
//..12/25/2007
Invalid Date or Time
The last symbol is ?. It’s another funny one. Sometimes (if you import data from some other system, or change field types) you might wind up with bogus data in your date field. For example, Microsoft Excel is glad to let you type “sometime next week” in a column that normally holds dates. If you then import this into a date field, FileMaker accepts it (what else is it going to do?) but considers the value invalid. Later, you can switch to Find mode, put ? in the date field, and perform the find. FileMaker finds every record with an invalid date like this.
The ? symbol works for time and timestamp fields as well.
A Few Examples
Find symbols are flexible and powerful. Chances are you’ll dream up ways to use them that I’ve never thought of. But here are a few examples that might come in handy:
If you have a Full Name field and you want to find everyone with an initial, try this:
@
It will find exactly one character. Since periods aren’t indexed, it will find all of these:
- J. R. R. Tolkien
- Charlotte A. Cavatica
- A. A. Milne
To quickly find everything up to today, put this in a date field:
..//
Likewise, if you want everything today or later try this:
//..
If you’re using our delete duplicates technique, you can make your script run faster if you find the duplicates first. Put ! in each of the match fields, and FileMaker will find only the records the script actually cares about.
If 37Signals is one of your customers, but you can’t remember if it’s 37signals or 73signals (or 737signals for that matter) search for this:
#*signals
We’ll see you soon for our next article on Find mode. Until then, enjoy your new found symbol knowledge.