How to Search FileMaker Case Sensitive Finds

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Guest post by Jason Mundok, IT Solutions Consulting, Inc.

 

 

Performing FileMaker case sensitive finds is an easy, yet very robust feature. FileMaker’s query functionality is very user friendly and intuitive, allowing users to simply change to Find mode by clicking the Find button in the Status Toolbar and enter search criteria in any fields visible on the current layout. After entering search criteria, clicking Perform Find in the Status Toolbar will return a found set of records that match those criteria.

If you ever needed to search for case sensitive data in FileMaker, you probably discovered that out of the box, that is not a default behavior or FileMaker. It is however, very easy to setup, but you need Full Access to your system to do it.

FileMaker Case Sensitive Finds Example

In the example below we have codes entered in the Code field as both lower case and all caps. If a user enters “abc” in Find mode, the default behavior for FileMaker is to ignore case and return all records that contain either “abc” or “ABC”.

If the desired result is only “abc”, you can change the indexing language for the code field to Unicode, which will allow FileMaker to recognize the upper and lower case letters as different characters.

Setting Up a Field


From the File menu in the FileMaker window, select Manage, and then Database to view the Manage Database window. Navigate to the Fields tab and make sure the correct table is selected in the Table drop down list. Double click the appropriate field, in this case the Code field, and navigate to the Storage tab. Select Unicode in the Default Language drop down and click OK to close the Field Options box and the Manage Database window.

The next time you perform a Find for “abc” only the records that contain that exact value will be returned. The records that contain “ABC” in the Code field will be omitted from the resulting Found Set.


The crew at Skeleton Key would like to thank Jason Mundok for making the first ‘guest post’ to our blog. If you have any questions or comments about this tip, feel free to contact Jason at jason.mundok@itsolutions-inc.com.