Finding records troubleshooting
Can’t click into a field to enter find criteria
 •
Finds cannot be made on summary fields, container fields, or fields defined with the global storage option.
 •
See also Can't click or tab into a field.
Can’t find records
 •
Check your spelling carefully.
 •
Use the index to enter criteria accurately.
 •
Data is entered into the wrong field type.
 •
A range was entered backward; it must be smallest to largest.
 •
If a field is formatted to display as checkboxes or radio buttons, some values in the field might not be visible. For example, if the value list item was changed from Jr to Junior, any records entered under Jr will not be found by clicking the Junior checkbox/radio button. To find all possible values in a field, use a copy of the field that is not formatted to use a value list or radio buttons, and enter find criteria into this field.
Finding records that shouldn't be included
 •
More than one value is in the field and you can’t see it. Click in the field to see all the data the field holds.
 •
Words in your find criteria are too long to be indexed (for example, a long chemical formula). FileMaker Pro indexes the first 100 characters of each word in a text field, including spaces.
Finding the wrong records
 •
See also the previous two items.
 •
If finding in portals, see Finding data in related fields.
 •
In most finds using Omit, define Omit requests last. (First include all the records you want to select from, then exclude undesired records from the group.)
 •
See Finding duplicate values.
Finding the wrong date
 •
The date field may not contain dates entered in a valid date format. This can happen, for example, if the dates were imported.
 •
The date entered in the find request may be in an invalid format. For information on finding dates, see Finding numbers, dates, times, and timestamps and Finding ranges of information.
 •
Dates might not have been entered with four-digit years and thus could be inadvertently placed in a different century than you intended, either in the find request or during data entry. To avoid confusion when entering dates, always use four-digit years. For more information, see Conversion of dates with two-digit years.
 •
The dates might not be in field that uses the date type (or a calculation field that returns a date result).
 •
Check the system formats currently and previously used.
 •
If the file was converted from a previous FileMaker Pro version, it’s possible that your date data is using a date separator that is no longer supported. (FileMaker Pro no longer allows the month, day, and year to be separated by an alphabetic character or the time separator.)
If your dates use an invalid date separator, use one of the following methods to manually edit date data that uses alphabetic characters or the time separator:
 •
Choose Edit menu > Find/Replace.
 •
Use the Substitute function. For example:
Before conversion, use: Substitute(DateField,”:”,”/”)
After conversion, use: Substitute(DateField;”:”;”/”) .
Finding is slow
Finds might take longer than usual in:
 •
fields that are not stored or indexed. To see if a field is stored and indexed: choose File menu > Manage > Database and click the Fields tab. Select the field, click Options, then click Storage.
 •
searches on related fields.
 •
searches in networked files.
If a file is shared and it contains global fields, you may be able to improve the performance of certain client find requests by moving some global fields into a separate table. For more information, see the Notes section in Defining global fields (fields with global storage).
Results vary when using wild cards in an external ODBC data source
When you do searches in an external ODBC data source using wild cards, your results might vary from wildcard searches in FileMaker Pro.
Related topics 
Finding records
Saving a find request
Was this topic helpful? Send feedback.