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Choose Which Columns a Search Matches

Goal​

Decide which columns a typed search matches against, so someone can find a record by its account number or email address rather than only by its name.

Prerequisites​

  • You are signed in with a maker (or platform administrator) role.
  • The table being searched exists, with the text fields you want searched.

Steps​

  1. Open the table being searched in Tables, and go to the Views tab.
  2. Select New to open the View Designer.
  3. Enter a display name — for example, Contact Quick Find — and a logical name after the publisher prefix, for example contact_find.
  4. Set View type to Quick Find.
  5. Drag onto the grid header every field a search should look at — for example the name, the email address, and the account number.
  6. Tick Default view.
  7. Select Save.

Typing in a lookup on this table now matches any of those columns.

What happens behind the scenes​

A quick find view is read for its columns only: they are the searched set. Its filters and sort order are not used, because it answers "what does search look at", not "what is listed" — use a lookup view to decide what the results panel shows.

Text is matched case-insensitively anywhere in the column, and the columns are combined with OR, so a record matches if any one of them contains what was typed.

Only text columns can be searched this way. A quick find view that also names a number, date, or yes/no column keeps working — those columns are simply skipped, since "contains this text" is not a question they can answer.

With no quick find view, a search matches the table's primary field alone.

Troubleshooting​

  • Searching an account number finds nothing. The account number column is probably not in the quick find view — or it is stored as a number rather than text, in which case it cannot be searched by "contains".
  • A search returns too much. Narrow the searched columns: every extra column widens what matches, because the columns are OR'd.
  • Nothing changed. Confirm the view's type is Quick Find, that it is the default, and that you created it on the table being searched.