Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.
Words and Phrases
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| A single word | cat
|
Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats". |
|
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase. |
"cat food" (quotation marks) |
Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase. |
Using Boolean Operators
| Search for | Operator | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Two or more words in the same topic |
|
|
| Either word in a topic |
|
|
| Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
|
|
| Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
|
| A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
|
Changing data types
A System Administrator can change the type of a scalar field. For example, from a character field to a number field.
If no data exists in the file, you can edit the field and change the field type quickly without any other modification required.
If data exists in the file, you must first change the type of the field in the database dictionary record, and then convert the existing data in the modified field to be consistent with the new field type. This must be done for all records in the file that contain data in the modified field.
Related topics
Arrays
Structures
Arrayed structures
Alias fields
Methods for updating database dictionary records
Methods for deleting database dictionary records
Adding a key
Modifying a key
Deleting a key
Modify field types: Single to concatenated
Modify field types: Character (scalar) to array
Change data types: Character to number
Remove a field from an existing database dictionary record
