One of the most overlooked but powerful features added recently to FileMaker’s user toolkit is the set of shortcut options for finding time and date ranges. You can now find ranges of dates and times by entering Find Mode, typing as little as one character in a date or time field, and then performing the Find. FileMaker makes searching for time and date ranges easy and fast. By learning a few simple rules, you and your users will immediately begin saving time and mouse clicks.

Year and month ranges

Have you ever had to quickly find and print a list of sales orders for a particular year? Have you ever needed to quickly get a count of students enrolled in your school in particular month? Use the following tips to make finding records within a year or month range easy. In Find Mode, enter just the four-digit year to find all records within that year. For example, if you enter Find Mode and type "2006" in a date field and then perform the find, all records with a 2006 date in that field will be returned. If you enter just the month number then all records within that month, within the current year, will be returned. For example, if the current year (according to your operating system) is 2007, entering "3" in the date field will return all records that contain a March 2007 date. To find records within a month for years other than the current year, simply include the year along with the month. Entering "3/2006" will return all records that have a date between and including 3/1/2006 and 3/31/2006. You can combine these shortcuts with the standard range symbol ("...") to extend your date range searches. Enter the range symbol between two "month numbers" to find all dates within and between those two months. For example, if the current year is 2007, enter "3...6" in a date field when performing a find to return records that contain a date between and including 3/1/2007 and 6/30/007.

Day searches

Did you ever have to quickly find all meetings in your scheduling system that fall on a certain day? You can simply enter the first three characters of the day in a date field when performing the find to return all records that fall on that day. For example in Find Mode, entering "thu" in a date field will return all records with a date in that field that falls on a Thursday.

Time searches

Speaking of scheduling systems, have you ever needed to find all events that fall within a particular hour, or that fall on a particular minute within the hour? The following tips will show you how to quickly return these records. You can enter just the hour (1-24) or the hour (1-12) along "am" or "pm" to return records with time values that fall within that hour. For example in Find Mode, entering 1pm in a time field and performing the find will return all records with a time value from 1:00:00 pm to 1:59:59 pm in that field. Entering "1pm...2pm" (or "13...14") will return all records with a time value between and including 1:00:00 pm and 2:59:59 pm. Entering just "pm" will match all records with a time value between 12:00:00 pm and 11:59:59 pm or "am" will match all records with a time value between 12:00:00 am and 11:59:59 am.

Minute searches

You may also need to find all of the records in a scheduling system that fall on a particular minute, such as the bottom of the hour or ":30". By combining the wildcard character (*) with a minute value you can quickly find all records that match that value. For example, in Find Mode, enter "*:30" in a time field to return all records that fall on the bottom of the hour in that time field. Happy FileMaking!

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