Forum Discussion

KarenHenke's avatar
KarenHenke
Qrew Cadet
8 years ago

Search is not working properly



Hello!

I created a new app recently and have noticed something odd... The search function (the search box at the top of the report) only seems to work on fields that are in the report that I?m viewing.



In my other apps, I can (for example) type in the Record ID and the record I?m searching for shows in the search results ? this happens even when the Record ID is not a field in the report.



This works for any field in my other apps. I can type in a word or phrase and any record that has that that word or phrase in it, shows in the search results.



 In the new app, it doesn?t work this way. I can only search within the fields that are on the report.  



I can?t find any global setting that would control this. I?ve checked the fields and they all have the ?Include this field when searching/filtering this table? box checked.

Do you have any thoughts on how/why this wouldn?t be working in my new app?
Thanks very much!!

11 Replies

  • This was a new "feature" when using the search-box at the top of a report that QuickBase came out with last year sometime to help improve performance of QuickBase. By only searching visible fields; there were fewer fields to search. This meant however that you had to have those fields in your report. Mark Shnier came up with a formula-text technique that would allow QuickBase to see the content of many different fields, but the data in the formula would not be "displayed" - and you would be able to use that column in your report to essentially create a searchable field across many different fields in a single record. See this post for the details: https://quickbase-community.intuit.co...
  • Ugh. This is terrible! :( This was one of the selling features when the team I'm working with decided to go with QuickBase. I'm going to have some very disappointed VPs to deal with now. I wish this was something that could be turned on and off - not something set in stone that everyone has to deal with. We don't have any performance issues as far as search being too slow. This is really, really not good....
  • I strongly recommend Mark's solution to the problem.  While it will take a little while to setup the formula; it will be extremely useful in the long run to allow Users to search fields that you need them to be able to search without showing each column on the report.  The performance aspect may not appear to affect you; but when fields are created, they are by default set to "searchable".  This means that unless you turn this off for numeric, date and checkbox fields; for example; that QuickBase will automatically be searching many fields that would never contain a text value.
  • There is also the "global search" at the top of the window which will by default search every searchable field in a table that has been set to be searched globally (this is a table control setting)
  • The link in the first post takes me to the QuickBase Community (over 9K postings) not to a specific post?


  • This thread explains it. That link is now broken due to the change in platform for this community.
    • KarenHenke's avatar
      KarenHenke
      Qrew Cadet
      Thoughts on how I might find Mark Shnier's formula-text technique? Thanks!
    • LauraThacker's avatar
      LauraThacker
      Qrew Captain
      Create a Formula-Text field with HTML enabled:

      var text url=List(" ",,[Sub 2]);
      var text words = "";

      "<a href=" & $URL & ">" & $Words & "</a>"

      or
      "<a name=" & $URL & ">" & $Words & "</a>"

      This will show up as an empty value on a report; but still be searchable