Find Matching Records - How to disable?

Questions
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1

Never one to be surprised to find something new after 35-years of FileMaker development, I hope someone can help with this one.

A contextual menu item I've never really taken notice of before, when in a field in Browse mode, is 'Find Matching Records'. Never having had the need to use this (has anyone?), it is creating a headache in controlling access to some data (please no lectures that we should be using record and field level security, we know this argument and will become a tangent to this question)
Contextual Menu

We need to disable this menu, but it appears to be a challenge. It appears to be embedded within the View > Find Mode standard menu and doesn't appear within the custom menu selection. Removing the standard 'Find Mode' menu and it disappears. So how to disable but still allow a user to enter find mode?

We created a single line script to enter find mode, created a custom menu, replaced the standard menu item with another, again called 'Find Mode', set command/ctrl F as the shortcut, ran our script and success!

However, now the Find button in the status bar is unavailable, everything else is working as required and no contextual menu item, along with Extend and Constrain items disappear.

Back to the custom menu: enabling the 'Based on existing command' and leaving all the 'Override default behaviours' selected. The status bar find button reappears, as do the 'Find Matching Records', Constrain and Expand contextual menu items. Back to square one!

We did script a custom menu 'Perform Find' and add an 'Omit' to the script, but again the 'Perform Find' status bar button is disabled, as are the return and enter keys.

So far, we can't find a way to independently disable this contextual menu item and would welcome any other ideas.

Many thanks
Andy

2

Have you tried overriding that menu command with custom behaviour?

3

That’s the problem Malcolm, there is no menu to override. It seems to be embedded within the ‘Enter Find’ menu as described above.

4

I don't have a solution but I just experimented with a simple custom menu set. When my custom set is in use, the contextual menu items for searching are not present.

I'll leave you to experiment, but it is certainly possible to override it. Hopefully you can find the right combination.

@AndyHibbs, I'm updating this post to include screen shots.

Here is the limited menu set that I used to experiment. I made copies of the Records menu set and the Requests menu set and did not make any other modifications.

Screen Shot 2023-09-03 at 12.16.48 PM
Screen Shot 2023-09-03 at 12.16.48 PM1714×1212 172 KB

After choosing this Custom Menu, the change in the contextual menu set is dramatic, as you can see in the next image. The only options available to users are the sort commands.

limited_contextMenu

With the default menus, the contextual menu contained a lot options for the user. Perhaps @planteg is onto something.

full_contextMenu
full_contextMenu642×1034 92.1 KB

5

Maybe consider not exposing the native FM status bar? Use scripted Finds instead along with custom tool sets.

NoStatusBar
NoStatusBar852×550 152 KB

Also, maybe look at the field's entry property of "Find Mode" or not.

Good luck.

6

Thanks @FMUSER01

We’ve tried everything we can see. As mentioned above, removing the standard ‘Enter Find’ and replacing it with a scripted custom menu is the only way we can find to remove ‘Find Matching Records’.

It is very unusual for FileMaker to include a menu that cannot be controlled using custom menus, but this one seems to be an exception. If anyone is using scripted finds to control what a user can see, this contextual menu will break these if the ‘Enter Find’ standard menu is enabled.

I’m going to post a feature request on the community forum asking that we are able to control this.

7

Can it be that this functionality is linked to fields and not finding ? This lets one find other records with the same value in this same field, some kind of fast track to do that find. Then maybe this menu choice is located elsewhere in the menu tree.

It's just a guess.

8

This was my thought as well, although I know @AndyHibbs has buckets of knowledge/experience and likely has reason to allow the status bar to be exposed. In all of my solutions to be used by clients I remove the View... Status Bar from the menu options and hide the element on all layouts. (I don't want the risk of creating new records, deleting records, etc.) This, of course means that an alternative must be provided, and I handle that with various button bars and scripted navigation support in a nav header.

(P.S. I also don't like the appearance of the status bar, so there's that. :wink: )

9

in our environment, windows-users are rarely using menus/shortcuts. Therefore, we have the menu-settings (security) just for 'editing'.

I personally use the 'select like this' very often, but I need to have access to all data..

Is there a way to 'not allow' that via security settings ('role', access,)?

10

Far simpler: In the EDIT Privilege set > Advanced Settings, in the lower right, set the available menu for MINIMUM - viola, no context menus :slight_smile:

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