I use Panorama mostly to clean up lists - no procedures, and the lists are for many different purposes with varying fields.
I am used to the way “Search” worked in Pan. 6 - I would go to a field, hit “Search” and the dialog would populate with that field so I could enter the search criteria.
I keep making the mistake of clicking on a field and hitting Search, expecting it to be in the Search dialog, and instead find the last field that I searched for. I constantly search on different fields as I clean data, and the fields are never the same from one file to another. Is there any way to have the active field appear in the “Search” dialog as a default, or am I not seeing a feature that is there?
I’ve been looking through the forum and the documentation and can’t figure it out.
Thank you so much, Dave. It turns out I did have “current field” selected in the preferences, but I did not have “Reset search criteria.”
However, I don’t always want the search criteria to be reset when opening the dialog. Sometimes I am looking for an additional field (and/or) to search in, so I only want to modify the last search, not lose it (and I can’t favorite it because my lists and searches are so diverse).
Well, you have a conflict there. The field you were searching is part of the search criteria. If you don’t reset it, you will have the same field you searched last time.
You could change the preference to meet your current need. You can even leave the Preferences window open in the background, so that you can change it back when you are done.
Hmmm… I do wish there was another way, because I know myself and I will now forget to change the pref with each new Search! That may end up being the bigger loss if I have a complicated search happening and I lose it.
But thank you for taking the time to respond, Dave.
It doesn’t forget your last search. Here’s the scenario.
You open the dialog and perform a complicated search.
You don’t get the results you were expecting. “Oops I guess I made a mistake.”
You reopen the dialog, forgetting to change the preference setting, and your last search is nowhere to be seen.
You Cancel, and then change the preference setting.
You reopen the dialog, and this time it shows your previous search.
And I’m finding your original suggestion extremely helpful, as it turns out that when I start a new search, more often than not a new search is exactly what I want. And if I make a mistake, now I have the tools to reverse it. Thanks again, Dave!
If you click on the number of records in the tool bar, the first item in the pop-up menu is usually Find/Select. But if you hold down the Shift key, it turns into Repeat Find/Select. This allows you to repeat the last search even if the preference is set to reset the search. You can hold down the Shift key either before or after you click.
