Finding First Names

[cpetroff]

When I am in the Family Mailing list, is there a way to do a Find by first name only? If I leave the Last Name field blank, and enter a First Name, then the program uses that name to search within the Last Names instead of the First Names. Is there a wildcard that can be placed under the Last Name field?

[Zaphod]

There doesn't seem to be any good way to do this, but I do know that Program Development is working on a way to sort the locate lists so that you can order them by any of the available columns. It looks like this may be a feature of version 9. You would then be able to type the first few letters of the field (in this case, the first name) and it would move to that record. The last name field already works like this in the existing versions.

[kcritchley]

I made a custom report under personal profiles which allows me to search for any first name in the database. Under membership, go to personal profiles and add one called first name or something. Then you pick the "profile first name" field, then pick the "starts with" operator, then type in the name or the first part of the name. It works well but the drawback is you have to edit the query and change the name for each search.
Hopefully this will be in a future upgrade because it is an important function. It is so easy to forget a last name.

[jeffkoke]

What I have done is generate a preview/screen standard report and then use the search function within it.

There are times when I have a name (usually of a child) and am trying to determine to what family s/he belongs. Quite often the child's last name is not the same as the parent's last name, but they share the same address. So, I'm doing a search on the address in order to locate the family unit.

ymmv,
Jeff

[ekg1]

I am assuming you still cannot find somone with first name only ... even if you have version 10. Is this correct. A post said this might be the case with v9. I still can't do it.

[tborgal]

Use the Locate tab instead of the Find tab and select the first name column then start typing the name. This should get you what you want.

[NeilZ]

I am assuming you still cannot find somone with first name only ... even if you have version 10. Is this correct. A post said this might be the case with v9. I still can't do it.

As Tom said, you can do this in v10.

[tborgal]

Neil,

I just checked this and it works in V9 as well. I am on the 12/13/07 mr.

[NeilZ]

Neil,

I just checked this and it works in V9 as well. I am on the 12/13/07 mr.

I had thought so, and that it was added in an MR, but as I no longer have a v9 setup, I couldn't check and did not want to pass on bad advice. Glad you were able to check that and I edited that post.

EKG1, check to see if you have the last v9 MR installed.