Weird "FIND" behavior - anyone else see this?

I get very similar results.

I get 4.

I get 12,782.

Yes, it's very odd, but it doesn't particularly bother me.

Thanks Ken...well, it is VERY bothersome to me. MANY of my records contain a digit inside other characters since they identify specific people due to a professional identifier and this really sucks since I can't use this to easily view those (and only those) transactions in the register.

I also don't see a REPORT that I can try to use that allows me to specify a specific string in any field to test if that works.

Can you be more specific about the construct you're using, in what transaction fields you use it (and why), and if, and why, you would need to see matching transactions from all possible accounts at one time, as opposed to searching just one account?

John, I'm not sure why any of what you ask is relevant to the issue as hand. What difference does WHY I use this got to do with the fact it doesn't work as described. I'd prefer not to give the specific format for privacy purposes as to the actual client identifiers the organization uses.

I sure there are many times that the same string is in either the PAYEE or the COMMENT field and would want a search to return all the transactions. It does so with 'gift', but not 'gif3t'.

So let's just say that one of the IDs is 'gif3t' (that was made up to start with), and it might be in the PAYEE field or in the COMMENT field of a transaction. The search argument 'gift' shows correct returns as both my and Ken Blake see, but 'gif3t' (or any other term with a digit in it I think) doesn't match correctly. Unless I am misunderstanding that the search argument does not allow alphanumerics which would be pretty useless in my case if so.

I wasn't looking for personal information - When I constructed my questions I intended them to be about nothing but methodology and usage. I just thought that I might be able to come up with a workaround, if the conditions were right.

Thanks John, I do appreciate that. Often your workarounds I put in my memory for future.

But moving back to the original issue, do you indeed see the problem on your end as I've described? Am I overthinking or misunderstanding what the search box actually is for or the semantics that it searches for.

I see the exact problem you described in R47.11, so it's been around for a while. I don't think you're misunderstanding what to expect from the Search box: I suggest you submit a problem report to Quicken, via Help > Report a problem.

If your needs can somehow be satisfied by putting your "gif3ts" construct in only one field while perhaps using other means for narrowing searches (such as Tags, for example), then I think Quicken reports may be able to address your need.

Quicken reports have a much more sophisticated method for specifying search (known as "Matching") criteria. But Matching in reports will generally only be useful for one field in a given report. If you can find other means for narrowing the transactions subject to the Matching, you might be able to get the results you want with current releases of Quicken.

I see the same issue. I also created a dummy transaction with gif3t in the memo field, and searching for gif3t returns thousands of hits, not just the one.

Wouldn't a transaction report do the trick, since this is obviously some sort of flaw?

But the problem with that (which I tried) is that I don't see how you can 'filter' that report to find an occurrence of a string in ALL fields of a transaction.

As an example, say you receive a monthly deposit from your daughter "Joan". And then the next month in your comment field you write something like "Joan overpaid last month". You might wish to see BOTH of those transactions with the string "Joan" which I don't think you can specify in a transaction report, thus the need to use the SEARCH BOX.

Thanks John, I will indeed send in a report, and thanks for the pointer to the screens to do so. I'll keep folks on this thread informed.

(And happy last week of the trading month for the first half of the trading calendar year to all.)

Yes, I see.

You could use the find box at the left top of the transaction register, which doesn't exhibit this problem for me. But that only searches the one transaction register which may not be sufficient.

I realize your example may be too simple to represent what you really want to do, but to address just your example: I believe you could use the report Customize "matching" feature to show those two transactions. On the report Customize > Payees tab, you could key "..joan.." in the "Payee contains" matching field, and "..joan.." in the "Memo contains" matching field.

Thanks, I did not recall seeing where you can place more than one string to match. Appreciate that pointer.

Also didn't know about the '....' as a wildcard type of specifier. Again, thanks.

But as you said, it seems to be and "AND", nor an "OR". I had 'Jane' in some PAYEEs fields and some COMMENT fields, and specifying 'Jane' in both fields in the report PAYEE dialog box indeed does NOT show the records.

As Taxed and Spent suggested: if you can limit your search to a single register (Search box above the "Date" column), your "gif3ts" search will work.

Sorry, I completely overlooked what should have been obvious to me.

To workaround the Quicken global search failure, and still be able to "search" multiple accounts for text containing alpha and numeric characters, such as "gif3ts", use the "All Transactions" pseudo register.

Key your search text in the All Accounts "register" Search box (just above the Date column).

In my tests, Quicken found "gif3ts" in every test transaction (in every account), where "gif3ts" appeared ... whether "gif3ts" appeared in the Payee field or the Memo field.

Should have said: Key your search text in the All Transactions "register" Search box (just above the Date column).

Hmmm...doesn't work for me. I was always understand that the search box above the date column is ONLY for the current account. I tried entering 'gift' in that box in a small charge account I have and it only returned those entries from that one account. I tried also doing a RESET as well to no avail.

Is there some other option I might be missing?

Andrew, see my previous post.

Use the "All Transactions" pseudo-register. Click "All Transactions" at the top of your Quicken Account Bar, just below the Account Bar title (which reads "Accounts").

Yes, that's correct, but...

...that's why John said to use "all transactions." The "all transactions" account is all accounts.