How do you search for empty (null value) field in a specific template?
If you are looking for a specific empty field and know both the template and field name, this should work:
{[MyTemplateName]:[MyFieldName]=""}
Any idea how one would accomplish a null date field search? I'm attempting:
{[Template]:[Date]=""}
But it doesn't produce any results.
That syntax works for me. Make sure you have the correct Template and Field names in your search.
You could try creating a date search for a date you know will return results for the same field and template using the search UI Template Search, check that it returns the results you expected, then just delete the date.
Thanks Brianna! Not sure what I was doing, but that syntax definitely works for null dates. Very handy.
I'm having a similar problem in getting no results for a null search. I have a folder and it's subfolders that have documents in which a field wasn't always populated when it should have been. If I drill down to the folder level on each one, I can see the field was left blank, so I know they're out there. But when I try the advanced search, I get no results. I've checked "Within Folder" and "Advanced Search" under the Customize Search dropdown. I've selected the folder and entered the syntax above with the template name and field name {[Business Tax]:[RBS Account ID]=""}. I have to include spaces in the template and field names, as they appear on the template that way, or I get a syntax error. Any help would be much appreciated, as there are several hundred documents, possibly more, that I need to update.
Hi Carmela,
That should work as a search so lets see if there are other things going on, spaces shouldn't be an issue either. A couple possibilities:
1) Do those documents all contain that Business Tax template? Fields added seperately from templates aren't considered 'assigned' if they are blank, so a search wouldn't bring them up.
2) Does this folder contain shortcuts to the document? If so, you need to ensure that the 'resolve shortcuts' option is selected in tools->options->search. Basically, that tells the search to look at the metadata on the documents the shortcut is pointing to, since technically the shortcuts themselves don't have field data. That comes up a lot when looking for field values in a specific folder.
Yes, Justin, all the documents in these folders contain the Business Tax template. They are older documents though, created prior to 2006. This particular field wasn't being populated back then. Could the version of Laserfiche they were originally created in make a difference? I'm using version 8.3.1.612 right now. And there are no shortcuts, but I selected the 'resolve shortcuts' option just in case.