The Find/Select Dialog makes it easy to make selections based on multiple criteria at once. Sometimes, however, you don’t know in advance exactly what you are looking for. Panorama has two options that let you build a selection incrementally — Select Within and Select Additional. The Select Within option allows you to whittle your data down gradually until you’ve extracted just the nugget of information you really need. The Select Additional button lets you assemble the pieces of information you need piece by piece.

To use these options, first make a regular selection, then open the Find/Select Dialog again. When there is already a previous selection you’ll see an additional popup menu at the top left of the dialog.

To demonstrate how this can be used, I’ll start by selecting Office Supplies in this checkbook database. I could do this with the Find/Select Dialog but instead I’ll simply right click on an Office Supplies cell, right click and choose Select Same (see Selecting with the Context Menu).

Now I want to revise this selection to show only office supply purchases greater than $500. To do that, I open the Find/Select dialog and set up the selection for checks (Debit) greater than 500. Notice that the preview shows all checks greater than 500, not just office supplies. When you revise selections this way, the preview does not show you what the revised selection will look like.

To actually revise the selection, choose Subset of Current Selection from the pop-up menu and press the Select button. Now the revised selection appears – there are only two checks for office supplies greater than $500.

Of course, you could obtain the same effect by combining multiple criteria in the first place. But you don’t always know in advance exactly what you are looking for. The Subset of Current Selection option allows you to whittle your data down gradually until you’ve extracted just the nugget of information you really need.

The Superset of Current Selection option is similar, but allows you to select a superset of the currently selected records. For example, if you have already selected names in Ohio, you could use Superset of Current Selection to also select names in Illinois. The result would be the subset containing all names in either Ohio or Illinois. The Superset of Current Selection option lets you assemble the pieces of information you need piece by piece.


See Also


History

VersionStatusNotes
10.0No ChangeCarried over from Panorama 6.0