Ms Office Tune Up

One other filtering technique works with forms: filter by form. Essentially, “filter by form” transforms your form into a full-fledged search form. Using this search form, you supply one or more criteria. Then you apply the filter to see the matching record (or records).

Although you can use “filter by form” with the datasheet, it really shines with forms. “Filter by forms” is particularly useful for searching out a single hard-to-find record. (If you want to use filtering to pull out a whole group of records, one of the other filtering options is generally easier.)

Here’s how to use the “filter by form” feature:

1. Choose Home Sort & Filter Advanced Filter Options Filter By Form.

   Access changes your form to search mode. In search mode, your form looks exactly the same, except all the fields are blank.

   If you’ve already used the “filter by form” feature and you’re returning to change the filter settings, then you should start by clearing the previous set of filters. To do so, right-click a blank spot on the form surface, and then choose Clear Grid.

2. Move to the field you want to use for filtering.

   A drop-down arrow appears in the field.

3. Click the drop-down arrow, and then choose the value you want to include in your results.

   The drop-down list shows all the values from the different records in the table (Figure 9-10). When you choose one, it appears in the field box in quotation marks.

4. If you want to apply a filter to more than one field, then return to step 2.

   Use multiple filter conditions if a single filter condition may result in more matches than you want. If you don’t remember a customer’s last name, you could apply a FirstName filter. But if that customer has a common first name, then you may also want to apply a filter on another field, like City.

   If you don’t want to use exact matches, then you can write in more complex filters using an expression. Use <10 to find numeric values under 10, and Like Jon^* to find text values like “Jones,” “Jonathon,” and “Jonson.” This trick’s particularly useful with date fields. Section 6.2.1.1 has the full scoop on filtering expressions.

   

   Figure 9-10. Here’s the Customers form in “filter-by-form” mode. Using the drop-down list, you can quickly find a customer by last name. Or you can find a name by typing the first few letters rather than scrolling through the list, as shown here. In this example, typing “Ra” brings up the first alphabetical match: the last name Randawa.

5. If you want to perform more than one filtering operation and combine the results, then click the Or tab and fill out more filter settings (Figure 9-11).

   If you fill out your first search form so that it matches the LastName “Gorfinkel,” and the second search form to match the FirstName “Jehosophat,” your results will include all the records that have the last name Gorfinkel and all those that have the first name Jehosophat. However, if you put both those filter conditions on the same search form, your matches include only people named Jehosophat Gorfinkel.

6. Right-click a blank spot on the form surface, and then choose Apply Filter/Sort.

   Access switches back to your normal form, and then applies the filter settings. At the bottom of the form, between the navigation buttons and the search box, you see the word “Filtered” appear to let you know that you aren’t seeing all the records.

   
   Figure 9-11. The Or tab appears at the bottom of the form. When you click the Or tab, a second copy of your search form appears, where you can fill out additional filter conditions. Each time you click the Or tab, another Or tab appears. You can repeat this process to fill in a dozen search forms at once, but there’s rarely any reason to go to such lengths.

   If you decide not to apply the filter settings, just close the search form. Access switches back to your normal form but doesn’t apply any filtering.

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   Tip: To remove your filter settings but keep them handy for later use, choose Home Sort & Filter Toggle Filter. To reapply the filter settings later on, click Toggle Filter a second time. Access stores the most recent filter settings with your form, so they’re always available.
   

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