No..... it's not on a report.
The question is actually coming in up in two scenarios.
First, on the home page, we have a "quick search", in this case for the Company table. I think it is correct to say it's a "search widget." You position the widget when you are customizing the page, then tell it what table to search. I would like the user to be able to type in the resulting box, and have it show results from the table, as determined by what they type, as they are typing. The way it works though is that you type, then you click the magnifying glass, and you get the results all at once.
Second, on dropdown fields that are looking at the company name, you click on the dropdown and get a line that says "browse choices." This takes you to a separate screen where you can enter a partial name in the search box - but again, the list doesn't change dynamically as you type.
The reason this matters is that we have a bunch of impatient users (executives) and some company names that are pretty similar, or that can be spelled in several not-quite-identical ways. For example "KeyBank" vs "Key Bank." We are trying to avoid getting duplicates of companies with different spellings. Also, several of our other systems work in this way, so we'd also like it to be consistent for ease of training, if possible.
thanks for your help!