Introduction
The “Find As You Type” feature is used in major lists and in Item Lookup, to locate a record with just a few keystrokes.
Configuration
In major lists, configure the Find As You Type feature by right-clicking in the list and going to Form Preferences | Find As You Type. Here, select the column for the feature to key off of. Please note that not every list supports the Find As You Type feature, and not all lists have the same columns to choose from.
Usage
Simply open one of Total Office Manager’s major lists and start typing. Based on which column the Find As You Type feature is set to, the highlight will automatically move to records matching the keystrokes entered.
In the following example, the Customer:Job List has been freshly opened and no keystrokes have been entered. The highlight is at the top of the list on the first record in the display. The Find As You Type focus has been previously set to the “Name” column (as described above).
Let’s say, for example, that we are looking for a customer named “Clay’s Auto Repair”. By simply entering the keystrokes “C” and “L” the highlight will automatically move to the first record in the “Name” column which begins with “CL”. In this example, Clay’s Auto Repair is the only record beginning with the “CL” letter combination, so it is highlighted by default.
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After a brief pause of 1-2 seconds without typing, the feature will reset automatically and be ready to conduct a fresh search. Simply entering the letters of the next record to find will start the process all over again.
Of course there may by plenty of instances where more than two letters are required to locate a particular record. If you operate in a city named “Mytown” there may be many similar entries: Mytown State Bank, Mytown First Baptist Church, Mytown City Hall, Mytown Supermarket, Mytown Dentistry, etc. In a case like this the Find As You Type feature will truly start locating a specific record only after the letters M-Y-T-O-W-N have been entered.
Tips
- Be sure to enter your keystrokes fairly quickly. Those who type in normal fashion at a reasonable rate should have little problem with the Find As You Type feature. Sometimes however, “hunt-and-peck” typists (read: slow typists) run into problems because the Find As You Type feature will reset between slow keystrokes. In the above example, if the typist entered the letter “C” then took too long to enter the letter “L”, Find As You Type may have reset between the two slow keystrokes. What the typist would have experienced was the feature successfully conducting two searches: one search locating the top record beginning with the letter “C”, and another search locating the top record beginning with the letter “L”.
