Search by multiple fields ?

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Guest

Is their a better method searching for a specific record by using mutiple
fields rather than using a single field search using the "find" command
button ?

I have an exsisting access 2003 database that has a form (patient details)
that contains personal info (name, dob, address etc) for about 2500 patients.
Initially the database was used just by myself but now there are several
people using it and ive had complaints about its poor search facility.

I wouild like to be able to hit the "find" command button and by able to
search by surname and forename (and if necessary the date of birth), these
are all individual fields.

Ive got a feeling its all got to do with filters etc.

In other posts you helpful people have suggested using visual basic etc but
iv no programmer - but any help would be very helpful as im getting sick of
the moaning about not being able to find records.

Thanks in advance !
 
Philip said:
Is their a better method searching for a specific record by using mutiple
fields rather than using a single field search using the "find" command
button ?

I have an exsisting access 2003 database that has a form (patient details)
that contains personal info (name, dob, address etc) for about 2500 patients.
Initially the database was used just by myself but now there are several
people using it and ive had complaints about its poor search facility.

I wouild like to be able to hit the "find" command button and by able to
search by surname and forename (and if necessary the date of birth), these
are all individual fields.

Ive got a feeling its all got to do with filters etc.

In other posts you helpful people have suggested using visual basic etc but
iv no programmer - but any help would be very helpful as im getting sick of
the moaning about not being able to find records.
Click to expand...

Access has always had a split personality. It can be used by serious developers
to build complex, feature-rich applications and it can be used by "normal"
people to create a database for their music collection, address book, etc..

To satisfy the latter, Access includes a lot of features and tools that are easy
for non-developers to do stuff with but which a serious developer would never
utilize. The built in "Find" tool is one such example.

It is pretty common to see requests in these groups asking how to change the
behavior of the Find tool or add additional functionality to it and the reason
that many of these go un-answered or produce unsatisfactory answers is that
people who would know how to change the behavior of the Find tool don't use the
Find tool. It is so much easier to create your own methods that not only do the
things you want, but do them better than Find that developers simply haven't
expended any effort in this area.

So...how much time do you want to spend and what do you consider your abilities
concerning learning some new techniques? This will largely determine what is
worthwhile perusing. Have you looked at the built in Filter-By-Form? Much more
powerful than Find, but still fairly intuitive to use. Otherwise a solution
that uses VBA is likely to give the most satisfactory results. On a difficulty
scale of 1 to 10 I would rate this as only a 1 or 2 (depending on the amount of
mission-creep) if you want to try it out.

Do you want to search on those three fields individually, all together, or
mixtures of combinations? When searching on combinations do you want the
criteria ANDed, ORed, or do you need to choose either? Do you want to search
only for exact matches or partial matches? Provide some more details and we can
proceed from there.
 
Ive just started looking into the filter by form and it may be sufficient to
what i need it to do

Im not wanting too much effort into the search facility and hence dont want
to head down the VB route.

Will consider your reply over the next few days.

Many thanks for your reply it does help things a good bit
 
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