On 6/19/07, Emily Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi - I'm a journalist trying to evaluate Base in OO version 2.2 to see if I can finally have a truly useful contacts database. Running Windows XP. I keep track of sources, people who I talk to for reporting stories. I keep the obvious information; names, phone #s, email, webpages. Also I keep fairly detailed notes on their areas of expertise and dates I've contacted them previously. I give each contact one slug (category) or more, basically a keyword such as "econ" in case I need to find all the possible economists in my list for a given story. I'm running into a problem searching for information and am hoping someone can help me figure out if it's really limitations built into the program, as it seems to me, or if I'm missing something. What I want to be able to do is to search both all fields or a given field (depending on what I'm looking for) for a certain word or part of that word, then pulls all the applicable records out to display . . .ideally in a list. So if I'm looking for an economist I want to look at every record that has the letters econ in any field. I prefer to look at all of the relevant records at once than try to flip through them one by one. It's just much easier to keep track of things . . also there is the possibility to save or print those pulled records should I need to refer back to that generated subgroup of my contacts over a few days. If I use the binoculars button on the form view, I can search all the fields, but only can view each record individually. When I do a query, INCLUDES is not an option for pulling records based on the search text - the closest is "like" and that doesn't cut it. (I really need to be able to search the NOTES, which is text without a set format, or the Slug/Category, which could have econ or econ politic or politic econ something else that includes econ - and again, ideally I could search all fields at once if I needed to)
The search string LIKE *econ* will find any record that has the string "econ" in the field being searched, including MEMO fields. Does that 'cut' it? By the way that works with queries and filters, as a filter is just an additional statement added to a query. Now this works well if you are searching a single field. A problem arises when you want to search every field in a table. The problem is that you need to create an OR condition. You want every record where the string "econ" is found in any of the fields, not all of the fields. Here are three records with the following layout and data: NAME, PHONE, ADDRESS, SLUG, NOTES B. Moyers, 301-555-1211, 1100 15th st, Wash DC, commentator, friend A. Greenspan, 201-222-1232, 12 Park Ave, NY NY, economist, great humanitarian H. Clinton, 201-111-1654, NOT AVAILABLE, senator, hear her roar Now you do the following: Open a query designer. Add the table Add all fields to the result set Add the SLUG field and in the criteria section you type LIKE *econ* Run the query You will get back one record, the record for Mr. Greenspan Because you have created the SQL command: SELECT * from TABLE WHERE SLUG LIKE *econ* But if you do this instead: Open a query designer. Add the table Add EACH field to the result set In the SLUG field criteria section you type LIKE *econ* In the NOTES field criteria section you type LIKE *econ* Run the query You will get back NO RECORDS. Because you have constructed an SQL command of: SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE SLUG LIKE *econ* AND NOTES LIKE *econ* The problem is that word AND between the two criteria, for Mr Greenspan then one side is true but the other is not. What you wanted to generate was the query: SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE SLUG LIKE *econ* OR NOTES LIKE *econ* This is a very common mistake with new users, and one that is easily overcome. I think the easiest way is to show you. Here is a screen shot of the query properly constructed to generate the OR query: http://www.paintedfrogceramics.com/OpenOffice/images/or_query.png I hope that gets you on your way..please ask if there is anything else that you could use help with. Oh and...Go Romney....LOL Filtering also wasn't flexible enough as far as I could tell.
I accidentally posted to the general list first, and someone suggested using multiple tables. But does that add to the hassle of data entry?
I can only guess on this - but most people developing a contact management database with a relational database, such as Base would do something like that..it doesn't make it right, just the norm. It doesn't really make data entry any more difficult, but it does make creating forms a bit more difficult. I would also note that I couldn't find any pre-selectable field named
"website." I figure I can rename fields later, but that did surprise me a little bit.
You can always ADD a field when using the wizard to create a new table. I would sincerely appreciate any assistance!
Thanks, Emily Drew Jensen
