Can't sort for not empty

[Colleen Easley]

Yesterday on my iMac with the new 3.0.1 version I created a new field called Position to contain the name of the position a member holds. i.e. President, secretary, etc. all non-officers are left blank. Then I created a search for Officers where The criteria was Position is not empty. That should produce just the 8 people who hold some sort of office. But instead I get almost all my records. For some reason 5 were not included.

Then I experimented a bit and found that if I put my cursor into what looks like a blank Position field, hit delete, and re-sort, that record no longer appears in the officer sort. So it’s like something invisible is in that field from the time I created the field.

I’ve tried deleting the field and recreating it, but still get the same results.

[Colleen Easley]

Now I’m finding that isn’t the only sort I can’t accomplish. I have a checkmark field “Dues paid 2014”. There are 104 records that meet that criteria. I have now created a checkmark field “Dues paid 2015”. There are no records that meet that criteria as we haven’t started collecting 2015 dues yet.

But when I create a search for ‘Dues Paid 2014’ = yes AND ‘Dues Paid 2015’ = no, I only get the first record in the list, whereas I should see all 104 records.

And it’s the same thing as the above problem – if I go into each record and click the checkbox and then un-click it, then they show up as they should.

[Brendan]

Hi Colleen,

Can you try rebuilding the search index to see if that helps? It’s on the Database Maintenance screen.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Colleen Easley]

Good idea, but no, didn’t help. Since I had fixed all the records referred to above, I created an entirely new field. Put an entry into just one record, and then sorted for “not empty” which should have resulted in that one record. No dice. 95 of the 104 records showed up. Re-indexed as you suggested, still no luck.

[Colleen Easley]

A little more info. I just tried creating a field called TEST. I put the word “test” in one record. If I search for ‘contains’ test, I get my one record. So the search index is correct. But if I search for ‘is not empty’ I get 102 of my 104 records instead of the one that I should have gotten.

Again, if I go to each of the records and put the cursor into the test field, hit delete, and then go back to my test collection, those records where I entered ‘delete’ are not showing up again.

[Brendan]

Ok, yup. I see what you mean. I’ll get that fixed.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Colleen Easley]

Brendan, I’m using the new 3.0.2 on my Mac but I’m still having a similar problem, but now with a checkmark field. I had a field called ‘2015 dues paid’, and I’m able to sort on those just fine, but then I added another checkmark field for ‘sent membership card’.

My search criteria is
2015 dues paid = yes
sent membership card = no

So far I have seven 2015 members but no cards have been sent yet, so all 7 of those names should show up. But none do. However, if I go to each record and check the membership card box and then uncheck it again, they show up fine.

It’s like new fields are just not registering with the proper value. I did a re-index and re-build search index – still a problem.

[Brendan]

Hi Colleen,

Oh bugger. I had looked into that and intended to fix it, but like the dog from “Up”, I must have seen a squirrel. :(

The problem is that with my current data model, when you add a field, there’s actually no values in the database allocated for the field. When you toggle the checkmark values, a row gets inserted into the database for it.

I’m working on a big database performance upgrade right now that should forever fix this bug because I’ll be storing the data in a completely different way; a way that doesn’t suffer from this problem. The problem is that it’s a big upgrade and affects every area of the app, so it’s going to take me a while to get it going. I’ll need lots of willing beta testers when I’m ready for that.

[Colleen Easley]

LOL – I get it. OK, well for now I’ve just changed how I will use that field. I’ll search for only ones that DO have the checkmark and that will work to. I had wanted to add the checkmark after I mailed off their cards.

Another problem I’ve had relating to new fields is that if I enter data into them on my own layout, it doesn’t stick. If I enter it on the default layout, it’s fine. So for example on this new membership card field – I checked it on my layout, switched to the default layout and it was gone! Go back to my layout – gone too. Check it again on my layout, and this time it sticks fine.

My next request would be for a way to remove the checkmark from many records at one time – like we used to be able to do in Bento.

[Colleen Easley]

When you get your new upgrade done will we be able to copy and paste to
and from the list view – pretty please?

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