Selecting a single record (or group) efficiently & quickly

I’d like for an old habit in Pano 6 to work as well in Pano X. Looking for ideas.

In Panorama 6, I would often want to select a single record where there was a unique field visible to me. Or I would want to select all of the records where they had a common entry in a field visible to me. My ‘trick’ was to select that particular cell or field, and do a quick keystroke sequence of Command-C, Command-F, Command-V, Return. With all the keys so close together, it was a very quick way to accomplish a selection. Now, with Pano X, I can type those keys much quicker than the Find Dialog can open and thus, I am always battling the problem of being faster than Panorama, which just shouldn’t be the case. I have to wait for the Find dialog to fully open before I do the Command-V. 'Tis a bit frustrating.

Ideas to make my old habit workable?

Create your own procedure to Select These Records with something like Command-T. You could have it copy the active cell or refer to a specific field. Add an Option to it to select just one record by the server ID.

Make that workflow a 2 line procedure that you trigger with a single keystroke:

copy
select «» = clipboard()

Ok, sure. But more specifically, I would sometimes do a Command-C, Command-F, Command-V, Command-L, Return.

Or a Command-C, Command-F, Command-V, Command-M, Return.

Yes, your idea of creating new procedures is always an option but I was stuck trying to figure out a way to get that darn Find dialog to just more intelligently remember the already requested desire for a Paste action. I imagine that the Pano 6 Find dialog was NOT written in Panorama, but the Panorama X Find dialog is, and was struck by the difference in speed or the way that they presented. If the Pano 6 Find was NOT written in Panorama, then perhaps the so amazingly often used Pano X Find dialog should also be NOT written in Panorama so as to present itself more quickly. 'Twas just another place where the perception of speed might be improved. People should not be quicker than the computer or have to alter the way that they work so as to slow down for the computer. Seems like a resurrection of the Qwerty keyboard fix.

You could right click on the unique value, then chose Select Same from the popup menu.

You coula also use this two line procedure.

let id=info("serverrecordid")
select id=info("serverrecordid")

Both of these approaches have the advantage that they don’t disturb the clipboard.

Ran across this while poking around the menus. In the Edit/Find sub-menu there is an item “Use Selection for Find” that generates an error notice:

image

Guess it is yet to be implemented or has been discarded.

Good catch, Gary. This submenu is created by Apple, ProVUE has no control over the contents of this menu, and those contents could when Apple releases new versions of macOS. I’m not sure, but I suspect that this item didn’t exist in OS X 10.7 or 10.8 when I experimentally figured out what was in this menu and how to trap them to run what I wanted. I did put in an error check so if new items were added to the menu at least Panorama would not crash, so that is what you are seeing. I’ve made a note to look into this, I’ll need to investigate what other programs do with this command and how that best translates for Panorama.

Best as I can figure it will keep the selected word or phrase in a system wide cache for use when you next use the Find command where it is automatically entered as the find value. This cached value will carry over to other applications so that if you then do a normal Find in any of them it will have the cached value entered as the default for the find.

Aha, now that you mention it I have seen that happen, though it’s almost never useful to me (I don’t want to do the same search in multiple applications). So, I guess I need to go on a hunting expedition to figure out what API does this…

When I type Command-F for the Find dialog, I expect to be able to type a value and hit Return which I’m thinking should cause the default Select button to be accepted. This is not happening. Is this something I can fix on my end or am I missing something?

This may be just a restatement of the issue Robert is reporting, but I’ve observed the need to hit the return key twice to complete a Find/Select action initiated via the keyboard.

It works for me.

Only one press needed in the test I just did.

Note that keyboard handling in this dialog changed significantly over the summer. I’m pretty sure Robert is using the latest version, but I don’t know whether Bill is.

Also, check the Preferences – you can change the default behavior of this dialog, for example now you can choose whether Find or Select is the default when you press Return. Make sure it’s set the way you want.

I have found that yes, it takes 2 presses of the Return key to activate the Select button.

My Default Search settings are: Select, Current field, Reset search criteria

Playing with this some more, on my system, visually appears first hit of return key closes the search criteria entry box, and second hit of return key initiates the selection. Also just discovered that function-return (ie, keyboard selection of the default button) will complete the selection in one stroke.

I have the same default search settings as Robert has. I also have all 3 search favorites selected.

Pan X 10.2.0.b24 (3860)
macOS 11.6.1

Looks like only one press of the Return key is required on older versions of macOS, but on newer versions two returns are required.

I can’t confirm that on my 2019 MBP 13" with macOS 12.0.1. I need one key press only with the return key of its internal keyboard.

When I use my external Satechi Slim Bluetooth keyboard, I get different results for the return key (once) and the Enter key (twice).

Interesting.