In each tab of the Filter Criteria window, there are several Group Boxes, each enclosed by a thin grey line. A group box contains several fields from which you can enter or select your filter criteria by using the checkboxes, text fields or drop-down lists.

For example, in the screenshot below, under the Company tab, there are 11 "group boxes": Company, Category 1, Category 2, Category 3, Product Category 1, Product Category 2, Sales Rep., Linked Criteria, Company Type, Venue Grade and Hotel Grade.

Note the thin grey line that encloses each group box.  For example, the Company group box only contains the Name field, and the Company Type group box contains both the checkboxes and the Inactive drop-down list.

In the text fields, you may be able to type in an entry or you may be forced to select a record from the Find window.  If you type in an entry, any record that partially matches the entry will appear.

For example, if you are setting a filter for the Event List report and you type “convention” into the Event Name field, any event with “convention” in the title will appear in the filtered list.

The drop-down lists may have different options, but they are fairly straightforward.

However, the drop-down lists with the three options of Unspecified, Yes or No operate somewhat differently.  These options exist mainly for filtering attendees.

Select Yes if the attendee must meet the criterion for the records to appear in the filtered view.  For example, you would select Yes for Presenters if the attendee must be a presenter to appear in the filtered view.

If you select Yes for more than one option, the attendee must match all “Yes” criteria for the records to appear in the filtered view.  For example, perhaps you want to view attendees that are both Sponsors and Advertisers.  The filtered view would not show attendees that are only Sponsors or only Advertisers.

Select No if you do not want attendee records of that specification in the filtered view.  For example, if you selected No for Presenters, attendees classified as presenters would not appear in the filtered view.

Select Unspecified if you do not want to limit the filtered view by that parameter.

If you select multiple criteria in one group box, a record usually only needs to match one of those criteria in order to appear in the filtered view.

For example, if you were viewing companies in the Companies/Contacts screen and selected Business, Educational and Government from the Category group box, the companies would have to be classified as Business, Educational or Government (not all three) to appear in the filtered view.

However, with the text fields, the records have to match all of the entries in the fields.  For example, if you are filtering attendees and you type “John” into the First Name field and “Smith” into the Last Name field, the filtered view will only show attendees with the name “John Smith”.  It will not show all of the attendees with either the first name of John or the last name of Smith, such as John Brown, John Peters, Mary Smith, Jane Smith and so on.

You can type in multiple search terms separated by commas (no spaces), and records that match one of each search term will appear.  For example, if you are filtering attendees and type john,jane,mary into the First Name field and smith,brown,peters into the Last Name field, attendees who have a name that is any variation (John Smith, John Brown, Jane Smith, Mary Smith, etc.) will appear in the filtered view.

If you select multiple options in more than one group box, the record must match one selected criterion in each group box in order to appear in the filtered view.

For example, say that you want to run a report showing a list of events. You selected Seminar and Wedding in the Category group box and Confirmed and First Hold from the Status group box.  The report would only list Confirmed or First Hold Weddings or Seminars.  It would not display, for example, First Hold Tradeshows or Second Hold Weddings.

In another example, say you want to view communications that are either Emails or Faxes and that have references that are either Evaluation or Thank You.  You do not want to view, for example, emails with a reference of Confirmation, nor do you want to see Letters with a reference of Evaluation.

If you choose criteria in multiple groups under multiple tabs, the record must match one selected option in each group box in each tab in order to appear in the filtered view.

For example, say you want to run a report of event attendees, but you do not want to see every attendee from every event.  You only want to view Advertisers or Sponsors that have been Registered or Invited to Seminars or State Fairs that have been Confirmed or are on First Hold.  Your filter would look like this:

Attendees who do not meet at least one of each criteria selected in each group box will not appear in the filter.  For example, Sponsors registered for a Second Hold State Fair or Member attendees registered for a Confirmed Seminar would not appear in the report.

While most of the filtering works on the basic principles set out above, the operation of the Linked Criteria is slightly more complicated and requires some further explanation.  See the explanation of Linked Criteria below.