Search/Filter Conditions

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Saving and Loading Search/Filter Conditions

Video

The List View has two main sections: Search/Filter Conditions and the List View Grid. In combination, these sections provide a powerful way of displaying just the records that are relevant to your analysis and then viewing that list of records and perhaps limiting the displayed records further by "selecting" only certain records from the list by checking the Selected Box. Once you have created a Current View that fits your criteria, you can switch back to the Data Entry View to look at each property record in greater detail.

Below, you will find step by step instructions that describe how to use Search/Filter conditons.

Search/Filter Conditions

Located in the top half of the screen, you can specify various conditions that a property must meet to be included in a subset of filtered records. For example, you may want to include only apartments with sale prices between $500,000 and $750,000. You may further want to limit your search to properties in a particular zipcode or a range of zipcodes. When you click the Apply Conditions Button or the FilterOn Button, these filter conditions will be applied and only records meeting the specified conditons will be displayed.

Using the Find Record button is an excellent option when you know what you are looking for; a particular Reference No., a Property Name, a Street Address, etc. But when you need to find all property records that fit certain criteria, Search/Filter Conditions can be set that will find records that meet the criteria that you define.

The Search/Filter Conditions section is designed to enable the logical selection of property records, using simple statements in various combinations. Before any statements are added, the Search/Filter Conditions window will look similar to that displayed below. For this example, we are using a sample database of records extracted from a county database.

You will note that there are 145 total records in the Current View, all records in the database.

Our goal in this example is to find and display all car wash records that are in the database, and then to progressively further restrict the records displayed until only those records that meet all of our criteria are in the Current View. More specifically, first we want to find all of the car washes. Then, within the car washes found we want to find only those car washes that have sold since January 1, 2001. Finally, we want to further limit our selection to only those car washes where the sale price is between $200,000 and $500,000.

Adding Our First Filter Condition

Our first goal is to locate and display all car washes that are in the database. To begin, click on the square button to the left of the statement Select records where all of the following apply. A dropdown list will appear. Select Add a new elementary condition.

A new condition will be added.

Click on the first asterisk and a list of property record characteristics will be displayed. These characteristics are broken down into categories. When you place your mouse on a category, it will expand the category to display a list of items within it. Since we are looking for car washes, we would place the mouse over Property Data and then click on Type of Property.

Next, click on is equal to and a list of comparison operators will be displayed. We are looking for all Property Types that are car washes. When the property records were added to the database, an individual car wash record may have been designated as a "self-serve" car wash, or a "drive-through" car wash, or a "full-service" car wash. We want to display any record whose Property Type contains the words "car wash", so we will select "contains" from the list of operators.

Finally, lets complete this Elementary Condition by entering the words "car wash" by clicking on the last asterisk.

The completed Elementary Condition looks like this:

Now, click the Apply Filter button to see the results. All records containing the words "car wash" will be displayed in the Records list. 133 records containing the words "car wash" were found. Our new Current View contains 133 records.

Once you grasp the concept, you will find that it is very easy to add Search/Filter Conditions that will locate and display just the records that meet your criteria.

Several Conditions can be added. Since our goal was to find all car washes that sold on or after January 1, 2001 whose sale prices were between $200, 000 and $500,000, we need to add additional conditions.

Adding a Second Elementary Condition

To add another condition, click on the Add Conditions button again and select Add new elementary condition.

A second elementary condition will be added.

The object of the second condition is to find, within car washes, those properties that have sold since January 1, 2001. To do is, click on the first asterisk, highlight Sale Data and click Sale Date.

Now click on is equal to and select greater or equal.

By default, the date displayed on the right side of the condition is 1/1/2001 - the one that we want. But you can change this date to meet your own criterion.

Now click on the Apply Filter button to view the results. Note, that it is not necessary to click this button after each condition is added. All conditions can be added and then the Apply Filter button can be clicked, applying the filter for all conditions at once.

Our new Current View contains 27 records that meet the two conditions that we have specified - property records that are car washes whose sale date is on or after January 1, 2001.

Adding a Third and Fourth Elementary Condition

We want only those car washes whose Sale Price falls between $200,000 and $500,000. In order to do this we need to add two more Elementary Conditions. The third condition limits our displayed records to all records whose Sale Price is greater than or equal to $200,000. The fourth condition limits our selection to all records whose Sale Price is less than or equal to $500,000.

The result is displayed below. Our final list contains 12 records that meet the criteria that we defined at the outset - car washes that sold from January 1, 2001 to present and whose Sale Price falls between $200,000 and $500,000.

Using the Selected Box

The Current View of the records in the database has been narrowed to car washes that sold since 2001 and whose Sale Prices fall between $200,000 and $500,000. Twelve Records were found. These records can now be reviewed and the Current View can be narrowed even further by using the Selected Box.

The records can be reviewed by scrolling through the list that is displayed in the List View Grid, or we can switch back to the Data Entry View to review each record in more detail. We can check the Selected Box to view just those records that we wish to use in our final analysis.

After review, 8 records have been selected by checking the Selected Box in the leftmost column. To display just those results, we click the View Selected button. The results are displayed below.

Notice that there are now 8 records in the Record List, or Current View.

If we switch to the Data Entry View, the same 8 records appear and we can browse through the detail of each record by clicking the Browse buttons or pressing the PageUp and PageDn keys.

Next: List View Grid