Right-clicking on a column displays a pop-up menu from which you can select the Filter option. A filter may consist of up to two conditions where each condition is built from a simple set of operations (such as equals, greater than, and so on) and some set of values. After applying a filter to a column, an icon displays in the column header to let you know that the column has a filter. There is a limit of 100 filters per Browser window. Each new column filter is appended to the previous filters to produce fewer records in the current view.
When sorting or filtering the contents of a Browser window, some restrictions apply to the special columns ROWID and OBJECT:
- The ROWID column cannot be used with any of the sorting or filtering menu items.
- The OBJECT column can be sorted as though it were a character column (A to Z or Z to A); ungeocoded rows appear as blank cells.
- If you want to apply a filter to the OBJECT column, you must first modify the OBJECT expression in the Browser window. To do this, click the Pick Fields button and in the Fields in Table list, select Expression. In the Expression dialog box enter Str$(object) where object is the name of the column. This enables the Filter right-click menu, and you can continue with the instructions in this section.
To apply a filter to a column:
Clicking Reset in the Filter dialog box clears your selected parameters, but does not clear the applied filter.
Clicking Clear Filter in the Filter dialog box, clears the applied filter, so that you can start over again.
Clicking Close (or pressing the Esc key) closes the Filter dialog box without applying your selections.
The following table lists the data types that may be used with each operator type:
| Data Type | Operators |
|---|---|
|
Character |
|
|
Number (Integer, SmallInt, LargeInt, Float, Decimal) |
|
|
Date or Time (Date, Time, Date/Time) |
|
|
Logical |
|
The following are filter examples. To begin, you would display the Filter dialog box by right-clicking on a column and selecting Filter from the pop-up menu.
Simple text sort: I want to display only records that are for the city named Sidney. (Character sorts are not case sensitive and do not require quotation marks.)
- Select the Equals operator from the first drop-down list.
- Enter Sidney into the first textbox.
- Click Apply.
Text sort with wildcard matching: I want to display only those records containing the phrase "ing". (A wildcard operator, such as the asterisk * symbol, is not needed for wildcard matching.)
- Select the Contains operator from the first drop-down list.
- Enter ing into the first textbox.
- Click Apply.
Sort on date: I want to display only records where the last updated date is before Jan 1, 2011. (Ensure the date format matches that used in the Browser window, such as mm/dd/yyyy, mm/dd/yy, or dd-MMM-yyyy for example.)
- Select the Is Before operator from the first drop-down list.
- Enter 1/1/2011 into the first textbox.
- Click Apply.
Numeric sort: I want to display all records that are either high or low sales, my outliers. (You may use commas, decimal points, and minus signs when entering numerical text.)
- Select the Greater than or Equal to operator from the first drop-down list.
- Enter 5,000,000 into the first textbox.
- Select the Or radial button.
- Select the Less than or Equal to operator from the second drop-down list.
- Enter 10,000 into the second textbox.
- Click Apply.
Sort for records that are empty or begin with: I want to find all records where the Category field is empty or begins with "Earth".
- Select the Is Empty operator from the first drop-down list. The textbox is disabled, because they do not apply to this type of sort.
- Select the Begins With operator from the second drop-down list.
- Enter Earth into the second textbox.
- Click Apply.