Thanks very much, that worked. The visual demo enabled me to figure it out.
Thank you Gary for posting that – I do, however, want to point out for future reference that the documentation pages I linked to also have visual demos nearly identical to this. In fact, the documentation contains 696 “visual demos” – almost every feature with a graphical user interface has one or more of these.
Although the Morph Field commands to strip surrounding punctuation and spaces did apparently work to fix my problem with Clairvoyance, the problem returned almost immediately. I have just finished adding a lot of records to the database in question, and very strangely and frustratingly, Clairvoyance only worked on the field entries in question about 50% or less of the time. I returned to the Morph Field command to strip surrounding spaces a number of times, just in case I’d done something wrong. CV might start working again with the text in question, or might not. It seems to be working quite arbitrarily, All of these entries are in the 2nd field of the database in question. CV seems to be working in all the other fields. I would very much like a fix for this problem!!!
The quickest and simplest way to fix this is to send a copy of your database to one of us and we can find the root problem (rather than continually treating the symptoms). I’m happy to look at it if you wish - say so and I’ll send my email address in a message.
Michael, thank you very much, but It’s a personal financial database and not one I’d like to share.
I never had this kind of problem in Panorama 6, which always behaved consistenty if with less sophistication.
If you have any further suggestions that I can try for myself, I’d be keen to hear them.
Thanks again,
A.
I think Panorama X is new for you, so naturally you assume the problem is Panorama X. However, Panorama X is not new, it’s been shipping for over a year and has accumulated over 120,000 hours of use since beta testers started using it in 2015. Clairvoyance is a popular feature, and it definitely would have been noticed if it wasn’t working reliably, or if it worked in any way different than it did in Panorama 6. In fact, the code for Clairvoyance was written in 2013, and has worked flawlessly since then, needing no modifications since Dec 6, 2013.
However, Clairvoyance is also a simple minded feature (and always has been). It’s not using AI or some fancy logic, just brute examination of all the data in your database. For every key you press, it scans every entry in the field for the entire database. If it finds only one match for what you’ve typed, it kicks in and offers the completion. So if Clairvoyance isn’t offering a completion, that means that there are still two or more possible matches to complete the entry you’ve started. The two or more matches are definitely there, because Clairvoyance found them. Again, it’s not guessing or using some kind of fancy algorithm, it actually found the multiple matches. In fact, the Clairvoyance feature is so simple it only takes up 14 lines of code (out of a total of over 200,000). It actually takes quite a bit more code than that to run the checkbox that turns the feature on and off!
For example suppose your database contains these two entries.
Grocery
Groceries
Clairvoyance won’t be of much use here, because even when you’ve typed in Grocer, there are still two possible entries. So while Clairvoyance is a nice feature, it isn’t always useful.
If you encounter a situation where you think Clairvoyance should be kicking in but it isn’t, a close enough examination of the data will show that there are two or more possible matches. If your database has a lot of data, it may be time consuming to track down exactly what the items are, but I guarantee the multiple matches are there – it is not acting arbitrarily. If you want to track down the matches, the best way would be to use the Find/Select dialog with the begins with option. That will find the matches immediately, and you could check them to see if they are caused by an extra space or something like that.
Panorama 6 included ‘linked’ Clairvoyance, which could fill in matches from another field or even a field in another open database. It was great. That isn’t implemented yet, although I trust it remains on the list to do eventually, after Server. A hook for the unimplemented LINK remains, waiting patiently, in the Field Blueprint, along with the, I believe still unimplemented, DUPLICATES. Last I recall you were still debating which precise rules to enforce for the latter. Those other Panorama 6 features regarding duplicates that are now implemented in Panorama X are working well.
I wondered if anyone would bring that up. Guess I should have proactively mentioned it, but I didn’t want to muddy the waters with that extra information.
Understood. Here’s something you can try - I’ve gone into more detail than may be necessary because I don’t know your skill levels.
Create a new procedure by choosing View->New Procedure ... from the menu bar. You will see this:
Click on the Properties icon in the top-right corner to close that panel and copy or type this into the empty window:
message listchoices(fieldname)
clipboard = listchoices(fieldname)
replacing “fieldname” with the name of your problem field. If that name contains spaces or punctuation, enclose it in chevrons (« and ») which you will generate by Option-Backslash and Shift-Option-Backslash respectively.
Click on the Run icon in the top-left corner and you will get a message listing all of the unique values in the field, like this:
If the list runs off the screen and you can’t read it all, open a Word or TextEdit document and key in CMD-V to paste the contents of the clipboard.
Then read Jim’s last post again and you should be able to work out what’s happening.
If none of that works, make a copy of your file, delete all of the fields with personal content in them and ask me to look at it.
It would be better to use displaydata listchoices(fieldname). That will let you look at all the data, and give you the option of copying it to the clipboard. I would paste it into Numbers, sort it, and look for similar items there.
There are numerous ways to do it Bruce - I was trying to keep it as simple as possible - Anita is not a programmer…
Displaydata is better to use than Message when you are looking at a lot of information.
The best advice was already in Dave’s first answer: You can do all the analyzing of the data in the data sheet by a Group Up. If the field has e.g. the name Category, Group Up the Category field, Propagate the Category field and Count the grouped items in a different field. So you can easily see all unique entries. With a right click on a summary record you can expand that summary to the data level, where you can edit those values that are similar only, but not identical.
Thanks all. I have not tried the latest suggestions. I am an experienced copy-editor & proof-reader, so I did a visual check comparing every entry in Category 2 (my ‘Categories’ category) containing ‘Home’ and found that all the ‘Home, Misc’ entries were identical. But was still having the same problem with CV sometimes working, sometimes not. In frustration I then changed all those entries to ‘Home’ and still found that CV would sometimes fill the entry as soon as I typed h, and then it would decide not to. There were no other instances of ‘Home’ in any of the entries under Category 2 in the database. The same with my category ‘Food, Household’. No other instances of the word ‘food’ in Category 2. CV would not work with it. I tried replacing it with ‘Food Etc’ and still no go. - Could there be something I’m not doing right in the Field Properties dialogue? But CV seems to be working for me in the other categories in that database. When I find a few more free hours I will try the suggestions you-all have made. Thanks for all help.
Yes please do send me the email address and I’ll send a copy, edited.
That’s why I included the clipboard statement.
Since that is not necessary with Displaydata, and it avoids changing the clipboard if you do not need it, that is another reason for using it instead of Message. A better tool is available, and people should learn how and when to use it.
I yield to a superior force. I particularly liked the example in the Help wizard:
displaydata WarAndPeaceI sent you a couple of personal messages (which won’t appear on the forum). These will probably turn up in your inbox. Don’t fret - I don’t have your email address - if you click on a contributor’s icon, a box opens and you click on the Message button.
I’ve not seen your personal messages. Does this message go directly to you or to the forum?