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Jason,
Sorry but I’m not sure I understand you. No, that’s not right. I’m pretty sure that I do NOT understand you.
##The two types of search
Let me restate and try to clarify what I said earlier: Airtable has two ways of ‘finding’ values in a table:
- Filters (click filter icon and define a filter)
- Finds (click magnifying glass icon and enter some find criteria)
A filter modifies the ‘found set’, that is, it hides records that do not satisfy the filter. When a filter is defined, the column is specified and only the specified column is examined. If you define a filter asking for records that have ‘Washington’ in the Name field, you’ll find Larry Washington and Susan Washington-James, but you won’t find anybody who lives in the state of Washington or on Washington Avenue. For filters, column specification matters.
For magnifying-glass finds, the column doesn’t matter. But finds are limited in two other ways. First a find only applies to the records already returned by a filter (if there is a filter). And second, a filter applies only to the columns that are not hidden on the current view. In short, a find is only applied to what was already on display before you did the find.
Examples
Imagine a table named ‘Animals’ with a total of five rows (records). Because the forum will only let me insert one screenshot, I’ll try to mimic Airtable’s display. I’m using a bullet character • to indicate the break between one column and the next.
_ • NAME • NOTES
1 • Pig • smarter than it looks
2 • Cat • doesn’t like dogs
3 • Dog • man’s best friend
4 • Aardvark • cute!
5 • Coyote • similar to a dog
Now if I define a filter (NOTES contains ‘Dog’), I get this result:
_ • NAME • NOTES
1 • Cat • usually doesn’t like dogs
2 • Coyote • similar to a dog
This doesn’t include the actual record for Dog because the filter looked only in the Notes column.
If I deleted the filter and was once again looking at all five rows, and if I then clicked on the magnifying glass icon and typed ‘dog’, I’d see something like this:
_ • NAME • NOTES
1 • Pig • smarter than it looks
2 • Cat • doesn’t like dogs
3 • Dog • man’s best friend
4 • Aardvark • cute!
5 • Coyote • similar to a dog
Where I’ve applied boldface, Airtable would highlight every occurrence of the string “dog” in the five records that were originally found (i.e. filtered). It does so in multiple columns — values are highlighted both in the Name (for Dog) column and the Notes column (for Cat and Coyote). (Incidentally note that Airtable highlights not just the matching string but the entire cell.)
What about a filter and a find together? In that case, the filter goes first, and then the find does its thing. For example:
_ • NAME • NOTES
1 • Cat • doesn’t like dogs
2 • Coyote • similar to a dog
Here, I had defined a filter asking Airtable to display only records that have “dog” in the Notes column. And then I added a magnifying glass find for “dog”. This highlights “dog” wherever it occurs but only in the two records found by the filter. The find does NOT override the filter and display the record whose name = “Dog”.
Now, say I leave the string ‘dog’ in the magnifying glass’s find-what field, but change the filter so it asks for rows whose Name column contains the letter “o”. Now I’ll be looking at this result:
_ • NAME • NOTES
1 • Dog • man’s best friend!
2 • Coyote • similar to a dog
Here again, the filter is applied first, and then the find.
##Bravo, Airtable!
Both of these ways of searching are valuable, the ability to use them together is important — and yet it’s not really complicated at all, after a little practice. This isn’t especially innovative but I think Airtable’s developers have done a terrific job of making these tools work in your browser.
##And on the iPhone?
Okay, things do work a little differently on the iPhone. I’m not completely thrilled about that, although I think I know why Airtable’s developers have allowed this difference of behavior.
On the iPhone, the magnifying-glass find is basically the same as on the computer in your web browser, but on the iPhone, a find also behaves a bit like a quick and dirty filter, in that it modifies the apparent found set. If the filtered set of records originally contained five rows but only two of them match the find string, on the computer you’ll be looking at five records two of which are highlighted, but on the iPhone you’ll be looking at just the two records.
I’d bet five cents that it’s done for UI reasons: so that more records can be viewed on the mobile display’s limited real estate. But, like on the computer, the find on the iPhone only narrows the set returned already by any filter that is active for the view. Here again, the find does not override the filter. Here’s an example from the same base I was using above, but viewed on my iPhone:
The filter previously applied on this view (not visible in the screenshot) shows records that have ‘dog’ in the Notes field. That’s just the records for Cat and Coyote. Now, on top of that, I did a magnifying-glass find for the string ‘dog’. NOTE that we’re still only looking at two records. If there weren’t a filter active on this view, we’d be looking at three records: the records for Cat and Coyote (which have ‘dog’ in their Notes column) and the record for Dog as well.
So even on the iPhone, a magnifying glass find does not search through all records.
Will
