Searching For Task Records

The easiest way to find any Task record is to open the Tasks Index Window (image below), by clicking on the Tasks Index hyperlink found at the top of almost every window in the software.

Then enter one or more keywords into the Search Panel at the bottom, center, of the window and click the Search hyperlink.

The window will display any Task records that contain the keywords your searched for.

Where those keywords were found in each record will be highlighted in light purple.

Note:

These search techniques will also work in the Idea's Tasks Index Window, and the Task's Subtasks Index Window.

Those windows look almost identical to the Tasks Index window, and they function the same way as it does.

Tasks Index Window displaying matching records.

Using Multiple, Consecutive, Keyword Searches To Locate Records

Each time you run a keyword search, the new search, searches the set of records currently displaying in the "Index" window.

By running consecutive searches, where each search uses a different set of keywords, you can narrow down the set of matching records being displayed, until it's easy to find the record you're looking for with just a visual scan.

For example, this search above scanned 973 records, looking for the records that were created on a Monday, in June, of any year.

The search found 21 records out of the 973 records that were searched.

Now if we wanted to know which of these records were created in 2020, during the AM hours, we could run two more consecutive searches, on the records above to find them.

Here's one way of doing these searches.

Start by erasing the 'monday, june' keywords in the Search field, and replace them with '2020'.

Then click the Search hyperlink.

This new search finds 3 matching records, from the 21 records that were searched.

Tasks Index Window displaying matching records for 2020 search.

Now we can clear the '2020' keywords and replace them with ' AM'.

That's a space and then an 'AM'.

Then click the Search hyperlink again and now we have 1 matching record out of the 3 that were searched.

The important thing to remember about regular searches, and especially consecutive searches, is that they're always searching just the set of records being displayed by the window.

Tasks Index Window displaying matching records for AM search.

The only time they'll search all of the Task or Subtask records in the Tasks database, is if you start the search by clicking on the Reset hyperlink (or the All Tasks hyperlink, in the Sort Tasks section of the hyperlinks list) first.

Doing that, loads all the Task and Subtask records in the database into the window.

Click the Reset hyperlink, or the All Tasks hyperlink, to display all the Task and Subtask
records in the Tasks Database.

Opening A Task Record In Its Editing Window

Once you find a Task record you're looking for in an "Index" window, you can double click anywhere on its record entry, and that Task record will be opened in a new Task Window, so you can edit it, or perform other operations on it.

For example, to open the first record in the last search we did, just double click anywhere on that record's entry.

Double click anywhere on a record entry to have its record opened in the Task window,
the record's editing window.

The record is displayed in the Task Window, it's editing window.

The Task record is displaying in the Task Window now.

Using An Advanced Search To Find Records

So far, in this help page, we've been doing regular keyword searches, where you enter one or more keywords into the Search field and click the Search hyperlink.

This type of search treats the keywords as a single block of text ('monday, june'), that it searches for in all of a record's fields.

The only search criteria the search uses is that the field contains the entire block, somewhere inside of it.

However, there will be lots of times when you need to search one or more specific fields, in simple, or complicated ways, and using a series of consecutive searches will simply be to time consuming, or not even possible.

When you need this type of search, you should click on the Advanced Search hyperlink in the Search panel.

You'll see an Advanced Search Settings dialog box pop up.

Then you can use it to select the fields you want searched and configure the rules for what's to be searched in that field, how comparisons are made, and how many of the keywords have to be found in each searched field.

The Advanced Search dialog box is displayed.

In this image the dialog box is configuring a search on the Creation Date field of a Task record.

This search is doing the same type of search that we used the set of consecutive searches above, to do.

But this time, it's only the Creation Date field, not all the fields in the record that are being searched.

Also, we get to use, in one place, all the keywords we used in the consecutive searches above.

The Advanced Search dialog box is configuring a search on the Creation Date field of a Task record.

After the Search hyperlink in the dialog box is clicked on, only 1 record, out of the 973 that were searched, started on a Monday in June of 2020, during the AM hours.

For more details about how to do Advanced Searches on Task records, click here.