how do I search more than visible Columns?

Imlost

I have split transactions, so I suppose that they are hidden. The little search window defaults to Search All Visible Columns. How do I get it to search everything in the dropdown?

RickO

The only way to search columns that are hidden is to make them visible using menu View > Columns.

That said, the search does include the individual lines of a split transaction. So, for example, if you have text in the Memo of a single split line, it will be found in the search, even though you can't see it when the split transaction is collapsed.

RickO

The only way to search columns that are hidden is to make them visible using menu View > Columns.

That said, the search does include the individual lines of a split transaction. So, for example, if you have text in the Memo of a single split line, it will be found in the search, even though you can't see it when the split transaction is collapsed.

Imlost

There seems to be some sort of disconnect then. When I fill in the search, it does not include the split transactions even though I have the search information included in the split tags(?) and notes.

jacobs

When you search, the results are transactions which contain the matching search term. For transactions with splits, then, you still have to click to open the transactions to see the splits, or set your Settings > Register to Automatically Show Splits in Register.

Imlost

Ok, I did try the make hidden visible from the View menu, which did work thank you for that helpful suggestion. Unfortunately it drags along the entire transaction, not just the single search line item, in this case a split deposit. However, adding a memo in addition to the tag seems to call more attention to it, but it still will give a 'false' total deposit sum indicator.

Imlost

@jacobs thank you for your reply; however; until I made hidden columns visible the splits were not included in the search results. I knew of one in particular and it never appeared until then. There should be, but evidently not, a way to pardon me, split out splits. For this particular deposit series it should no longer be taking place, but there are several of them that took place last year until I finally got the spousal unit to understand that we needed to stop making multi-check deposits.

Jon

If you're trying to figure out the total amount of transactions with a given string in the memo field, I'm not sure there's a good way to do that. You might want to switch to using tags instead; if you tag one line in a split, you can do a Transactions by Tag report and it will only include that one line item & not the whole transaction.

jacobs

I'm not sure I understand your last post. One of the significant shortcomings with Search is that it finds all transactions containig the search term, and so for transactions with splits, the entire transaction amount rather than just the matching split amount is included in the Search total.

If you can construct a Report to find the data you want, Reports contain the individual split lines rather then parent transactions. So if you can base your query on Tags, a Report should be able to get what you want. But if your query is based on text in a Memo filed, there's unfortunately no way currently to use that as a criterion for a report. there is a long-running Idea thread on this site asking for that functionality to be added; I suggest you take a second to add your vote for the Idea.

Imlost

If you look at the search box, it reads "Search All Visible Columns". My search did not return the split transactions until I made "tags" visible as Ricko suggested. And yes you are right, it returns the entire split transaction which did me no good. I only played with the memo field to see what would happen. Not all the transactions for this particular company are split, so I am having to combine 'regular' transactions with split transactions.

RickO

Yes, that is correct. The anomoly is that you can enter a tag or memo in the split line even though those columns are not visibile in the main register. But to be able to search those columns (even when embedded in a split), they need to be visible in the main register.

As Jon and Jacobs say, if you want to get a report that contains only certain lines in a split, you will want to use tags, not memos, and use the Transactions by Tags report customized to include only the tags of interest.