Finding Records with Filter-in-Place

When you activate Filter-in-Place, any collection currently associated with the form is cleared and fields on the form become blank. You can then specify filter criteria in one or more fields and retrieve a collection of records that meet those criteria.

If a previous search has already been done, any fields that were used as search criteria can still have the search criteria in them. To clear the form of all search criteria, press F5.

To find records with Filter-in-Place:

Open a form that is used to retrieve records.
Activate Filter-in-Place mode. From the Actions menu, select Filter > Begin in Place.
Enter a value in one or more fields to specify criteria for the records you want to retrieve. For tips on specifying filter criteria, see Filter Options (below).
Perform Filter-in-Place. From the Actions menu, select Filter > Execute in Place.
The system displays all available records that match the filter criteria you designated. The number of records retrieved is limited to the current cap on data records. For more information, see About Caps.
(Optional) To view the next set of records (beyond the record cap), click the "Get more rows in the current collection" button.

If no records meet the criteria, the system automatically places the form in "new" mode. You can create a new record (as you would after selecting New on the Actions menu), or you can repeat this procedure with different filter criteria. If you repeat the procedure, your previous filter criteria are initially specified in the fields. You can adjust them, or you can remove all of them. To remove all of them, on the Actions menu, point to Filter, and then click Clear in Place.

Filter Options

If you leave all fields blank, the collection is unfiltered, and the system retrieves all records up to the current cap on data records. This is often undesirable, so the system provides several means to filter and thus limit the return results for a search:

You can use wildcards in filter criteria as you would in a query form. The default wildcard is *. For more information, see Using Wildcard Characters.

You can use operators such as > (greater than), < (less than), and <> (not equal to) to augment your filter criteria. For more information, see Operators on Query Forms.

NOTE: Unlike query forms, Filter-in-Place does not support the logical operators AND and OR. If you need to specify multiple criteria for one field or perform Boolean searches, use the Additional Criteria tab of the query form associated with your form, instead of Filter-in-Place. Also, Validators do not run in Filter-In-Place mode.

To find records that are blank (contain null values) in specific fields, you can use the null keyword. For more information, see Using the Null Keyword.

To retrieve filtered criteria values in certain drop-down list fields, you can use the Find command on the right-click menu. For more information, see Finding a Specific Value in a Drop-Down List.

NOTES: To refine your search, you can use as many fields as necessary. For example, you could:

Specify all the customers in a particular set of zip codes, by entering 41* in a Postal Code field.
Further specify those customers who are past due on their payments by specifying "not null" (<>null) in a Past due field.
Even further specify those customers who are more than $5000 in arrears, by entering >4999 in a Past due amount field.

The results of this search would return the records of all customers who have a postal code beginning with the numbers 41, who are $5000 or more past due on their accounts.

Finding Records with Filter-in-Place

Filter Options

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