Finding a Donor

The most obvious way to find donors is to scroll through the Donor List on the left-hand side of the main window. As with all scroll boxes, you can click on the scroll arrow at the top or bottom of the scroll box to scroll slowly, or click on the scroll bar itself and drag it up or down to scroll very quickly, or click in the empty area above or below the scroll bar to scroll by one screenful at a time.

However, there are two better ways to find donors, which are built into this program. Once you have clicked on a donor in the Donor List, you can start typing letters of the last name, and it will immediately scroll to the closest match that starts with those letters. You can backspace to correct mistakes or to start over. The letters you have typed show up in the "Find String" area at the bottom left corner of the screen. Usually after you have entered 3 or so letters, you will find that the donor you want is already in view, and you can just click on it. You can also scroll with the up and down arrow keys, and with PgUp and PgDn.

If you start typing numbers instead of letters, it will search for a donor whose member or envelope number is the same as the numbers you have entered. You can use the number keys at the top of the keyboard, or the ones on the numeric keypad, as long as NumLock is on. This also shows up in the "Find String" area at the bottom of the screen. You have to type the whole number to find the member you are looking for. (N.B. Versions of DONATION prior to version 3.00 had a weakness, where typing an initial part of a number could go to any donor whose number started with what you had typed so far, so for instance just typing 1 could have gone to the donor with number 10. That is no longer the case.)

If you wish to find a first name, or part of a name if you are not sure of the spelling, use File à Find Donor or Ctrl-F. A Find window will come up, in which you can enter any name or part of a name to search for. Enter it (uppercase and lowercase don't matter) beside the label "Name", and then click the Find Next button or press Enter. It will immediately scroll to the next match for that name in the Donor List, or beep if there is no match. You can keep finding further matches by clicking Find Next or pressing Enter repeatedly. When you are done finding with this window, just click its Close button or press ESC.

As you will see, you can also search for a donor by member or envelope number on the Find Donor window. Just fill in the blank for Number, rather than the blank for Name. (You can't search for both a name and a number at once.)

As you will notice, the currently selected donor is always highlighted, and has a little pointing hand icon to the left of it in the Donor List. The current donor also shows up in the Donor Details area, and any donations for it show up in the Donations area.

The same find window that comes up when you use File à Find Donor is also available on the One Date Donation Entry window, by clicking its Find Donor button or using Alt-F.