Sort Results Alphabetically in Find: results

[chrisleake]

In the details view, when you run a search for a partner under 'Find:', the results are currently displayed in order of entry into DM. How about sorting them alphabetically by the first name? I have 32 people under the last name 'Smith' for example, so I have to scroll through those trying to find the one I want, in no particular order.

[jmuehleisen]

As you point out, when you do a find, the results are sorted by what is in the "Sort Name" field.

If you have just "SMITH" in the sort name field, you will indeed have to spend some time looking though an essentially unsorted list of Smiths.

But, ff you have SMITH JOHN and SMITH BILL and SMITH BUBBA in the sort field, then it will be a bit easier as the list will be somewhat sorted by by first name.

Now, here's a tip. If you know that you are looking for "Bubba Smith", enter .bubba smith in the search field (note the "period" at the beginning). If you preface a search with a . it will look for that text in ALL fields of the donor manager. If you just enter some text, it only looks in the "Sort Name" field.

This is handy if you know that the guy's e-mail address is "bubba@eatgrits.com" but you just can't remember who that is.

Anyway, back to the first name question.

Now, part of the problem is that the current donor manager does not keep the first name stored separately in its fields.

Now, I am thinking about changing that in a future version (which will also make synching with Outlook / Palm / etc. easier), but that is a limitation in the current version.

[chrisleake]

Cool, that period thing is a good tip. Yeah, I was thinking about it a bit more after I posted that and realized that that was why--no separate first name field. Thanks for the input, and for your service through Donor Manager!