Find Anything: User ID# problem

[Sheila Kronenberger]

I have been assigning User ID #s using either:

1) numbers - for my line,
2) starting with letter "D" followed by numbers & description such as "Spouse" or "Step-Family" as appropriate - for my nephew's wife's line;
3) starting with letter "J" followed by numbers & description such as "Spouse" or "Step-Family" as appropriate - for my brother's wife's line;
4) starting with letter "S" followed by numbers & description such as "Spouse" or "Step-Family" as appropriate - for my neice's husband's line;
5) starting with letter "F" followed by numbers & description such as "Spouse" or "Step-Family" as appropriate - for a line which MAY be connected at some time.

Using the "Find Anything" if I search for:
User ID# starts with "D" or "J" or "F" everything works fine.

But if I put User ID# starts with "S" I get all the ones that include the word "Spouse" or "Step-Family" no matter what the ID# starts with.

How can I get it to only select those with the beginning letter "S" ?
(Using 8.06 and Mac OS 10.3.9)

Sheila

[Michael]

I have been assigning User ID #s using either:

1) numbers - for my line,
2) starting with letter "D" followed by numbers & description such as "Spouse" or "Step-Family" as appropriate - for my nephew's wife's line;
3) starting with letter "J" followed by numbers & description such as...Hi Sheila,

While you didn't say specfically, I suspect the words "Spouse" and "Step-Family" are preceded by a space. That would be the problem here.

The "Starts With" search option will find matches regardless of the order of the words in the field. That is, Reunion is looking at each word in the field to find matches -- not just the very first character in the field.

For your "S" searches, you can try building your search criteria to include...

User ID# Doesn't Start With D
AND
User ID# Doesn't Start With F
AND
User ID# Doesn't Start With J

You could, of course, save the search as a preset.

Another choice would be to use a character other than a space to separate the words. Perhaps a dash or an underscore would work for you.

[marnen]

Any chance of regexp searches in Reunion 9? Or hard "starts with" searches -- that is, searches that will only match the first character of the field? It seems to me that either of these features would deal rather nicely with the original poster's problem.

[Sheila Kronenberger]

Hi Sheila,

While you didn't say specfically, I suspect the words "Spouse" and "Step-Family" are preceded by a space. That would be the problem here.

The "Starts With" search option will find matches regardless of the order of the words in the field. That is, Reunion is looking at each word in the field to find matches -- not just the very first character in the field...Thank you Michael.
I decided to change the "S" (from his first name initial) to "E" (from his last name initial) because I knew that I would never remember to put a dash or underscore every time I entered a spouse. I only had to change 215, which wasn't bad. I had no idea the sort was done that way.

Sheila