Find fails after Excel import

[MbuyaJohn]

The "Find" feature does not work in either the Partners or the Details panes. In the Details panes it responds "Sorry, I cannot find any names like that" I imported all of my partners from an Excel file. I changed the Sort Name for one partner and it now appears at the bottom of the Partners pane. Whenever I use find in the Partners pane for any name, the cursor jumps to that one which I changed. I tried changing another sort name as a test. In this case the test name did not jump to the bottom, but rather the following name in the list. With two names there I can now use "Find" to go to either of those, but still to no other names in the list. It seems to me to be acting as if any names imported with Excell are not getting indexed by whatever index Find uses.

[jmuehleisen]

Thanks for your message.

I think you traced the problem correctly with your comment:

It seems to me to be acting as if any names imported with Excell are not getting indexed by whatever index Find uses.

When you type someting in the FIND box, it does its search in the "Sort Name" field. Often, in an Excel import, that field doesn't get marked for importing (usually, you map the Last Name" field to that), so it is often blank.

So, you need to put something in that "Sort Name" field for the FIND to find it.

Now, here's a handy tip: in the "Find" box, preface your search with a * or a . or any punctuation mark, and the find will then look in ALL data fields rather than just in the Sort Name field. So, for example, if you remember that this guy's wife is named "Alice" but you can't remember their last name, just type ".Alice" in the FIND box and it will give you a list of all records that have "Alice" anywhere in them.

This is quite handy at times.

I hope that helps.

[MbuyaJohn]

John,
Thanks for your quick reply. I love this program, it is giving me a new level of information on my donors and is a tangible encouragement to bless those folks.

The hint about adding a "." to the Find string is a great help, thanks.

I found the problem. Your instructions gave me the hint. The strange thing is that the Sort Name box was not empty, but I had inadvertantly inserted a space in the beginning of my Last Name field when converting my file into Excel format. Which, of course, put a space before all the names in the Sort Name box. I have re-imported the data and it now works fine.

Thanks again for the great program.
John

[jmuehleisen]

John,

So, it was the space in the sortname that was causing the problem.

Oh well, I'm glad you got it sorted out.