Forum Discussion

Re: Search Bar help

So sometime may be five or 10 years ago the brain trust that QuickBase decided that when searching a table report they were only going to search fields that were both flagged as searchable and also were listed on the report. Prior to that if you had 1,000 fields in your table QuickBase would search on 1,000 fields and that was causing performance pain.

So how do we add extra fields into the search which are obscure like maybe a phone number or a postal code that you don't want to list on the report as it would cause too much clutter.

"no problem".

Make a formula rich text field which includes a string of all of the extra fields that you want searched.  This this field will appear blank to the naked eye but in fact includes that hidden text and will be searchable. If you name the field either natively or rename it on the report with say a space or a dot and locate it at the far right side of the report, I guarantee you nobody will ever ask what that funny skinny blank column is at the end of the report.  

var text URL = list(" ", [Extra Field to be search #1], [Extra Field to be search #2], [Extra Field to be search #3]; // build a string off all the extra fields to search.

var text Words = " ";

"<a name=" & URLEncode([Technique]) & "</a>"



------------------------------
Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
------------------------------

3 Replies

  • AnnaliseSansouc's avatar
    AnnaliseSansouc
    Qrew Member
    Thank you Mark! This is exactly what I need. I'm still learning all about formulas (I'm a QuickBase newbie) and for some reason it's giving me a syntax error. What am I doing wrong?

    var text URL = list(" ",[Tags],

    var text Words = " ";

    "<a name=" & URLEncode([URL for file]) & "</a>"

    ------------------------------
    Annalise Sansouci
    ------------------------------
    • MarkShnier__You's avatar
      MarkShnier__You
      Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
      If you just have one extra field to search in do this

      var text URL = [Tags];

      var text Words = " ";

      "<a name=" & URLEncode([URL for file]) & "</a>"

      ------------------------------
      Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
      mark.shnier@gmail.com
      ------------------------------
      • PrashantMaheshw's avatar
        PrashantMaheshw
        Qrew Captain
        Mark absolute genius !! I was running into the same problem . Thanks for this post


        Annalise, I've two fields Colour and f_ops , see how we've used them here

        var text URL = List(" ", [Colour],[f_Ops]);
        "<a name=" & URLEncode($URL) & "</a>"


        ------------------------------
        Prashant Maheshwari
        ------------------------------