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Cheat Sheet for searching through your entries

There are a lot of different search terms that you can type in the “quicksearch” boxes at the top of each column in the list of entries pages.  Here is a brief summary:

The basics

This search term: Means this: It will find:
orange find “orange” by itself or inside something else orange
orange peels
apples and oranges
=orange find the exact text “orange”, no more, no less orange
(it won’t find “oranges”)
!orange find entries that do not have orange in them red
purple
banana peels
!=orange find entries that do not match the exact text “orange” red
apples and oranges
orange peels
15 find the text “15” by itself or inside something else 15 baseballs
12715
15
=15 find the exact number 15 15
!15 find text that does not contain “15” 1848
3 strikes
etc
!=15 find anything except the exact number 15 14
16
15 baseballs

Numbers

This search term: Means this: It will find:
>10 find numbers greater than 10 11, 12, 1485
>=1000 find numbers greater than or equal to 1000 1000, 1001, etc
<65 find numbers less than 65 64, 10, -401
<=65 find numbers less than or equal to 65 65, 64, etc

Dates

This search term: Means this: It will find:
2009-01-01 find January 1, 2009 2009-01-01
>=2009-01-01 find dates on or after January 1, 2009 2009-01-01
2009-05-23
2010-02-20
etc
<2009-01//>2007-12 find dates in the year 2008 (see below for more info on using two terms at once) Any date starting with 2008
>=2008-10-01//<=2008-10-31 find dates in October 2008 (see below for more info on using two terms at once) Any date starting with 2008-10
2008-10 find dates in October 2008 Any date starting with 2008-10 (same as the previous, more complex search

More than one search on the same column

This search term: Means this: It will find:
>10//<100 find numbers between 11 and 99 11, 12, etc
>10//<10 find entries that are both greater than 10 and less than 10 it will find nothing…the search condition is logically impossible
santa AND !monica find entries that contain “santa” and not “monica” Santa Claus
Santa Cruz
>=2008-10-01//<=2008-10-31 find dates within October 2008 2008-10-01
2008-10-15
red AND orange AND blue find those three values. You can have as many terms as you want in a single column. Searches like this will usually only find matches if the field you’re searching accepts multiple selections (ie: checkboxes), and red, orange and blue were three of the options.

“OR” searches in a single column

This search term: Means this: It will find:
banana OR apple find entries that contain banana or apple. This is equivalent to ORbanana//ORapple. bananas
apples
grapples

“OR” searches on multiple columns

This search term: Means this:
on the fruit column:
ORapples
and at the same time on the vegetable column:
ORcarrots
Find entries that match either apples in the fruit column, or carrots in the vegetable column (normally, search terms on multiple columns must all be matched)

Wildcard terms {TODAY}, {USER} and {BLANK}

This search term: Means this: It will find:
{TODAY} find today’s date the text of today’s date, in YYYY-mm-dd format
>={TODAY-30} find dates anytime from the past 30 days into the future you get the idea
>={TODAY+30} AND <={TODAY} find dates between 30 days ago and today  
>{TODAY+14} Find dates more than 14 days in the future  
{USER} Find entries that match the current user’s full name, or if no full name is in their profile, then match on their username  
{BLANK} Find entries that are blank or empty  

Advanced developer-focused search terms

This search term: Means this:
{order} Find entries that match whatever is in $_POST[‘order’] or if that’s empty, $_GET[‘order’]. This is meant for use in a complex application where a certain screen might need to show different things at different times. You can save one view with this kind of search term and then make some kind of architecture (with javascript maybe?) to populate $_POST or $_GET with the values you need at the right time.
!{order} Find entries that do not match whatever is in $_POST[‘order’] or $_GET[‘order’]
!orange! Persist this search term even if this column is not included in the view. Certain columns are visible only to certain groups of users. You might want to use a search term on a certain column that only webmasters have access to, in order to limit the list of entries. Then you could publish that view to other users who do not have that column available, but the list of entries would still be limited by this search term.
!!monica//santa! When persisting a search that includes multiple terms, put the ! ! at the very beginning and very end of the terms. Don’t get confused by “not” operators (!) that may be part of the terms (as in “not monica” at the beginning of this set of terms).