When you first open the list, it will be sorted by record number, which, because of the list I used to input, will approximate the chronological date of events. Single clicking any column header will sort the list by that column in ascending order. Click it again, and it will reverse the order to descending. After several of these manipulations on different columns, things may start to look a bit messed up.. simply go to the drop down and re-select the table and it will revert back to its original listing by record number.
If you select a table with say 100 records.. no matter how many sorts you do, you will still be listing 100 records.. they will just be in a different order.
The quick search can be used to find individual records by a single word or partial word search. Using the quick search box scans every cell in the table, so your initial try may give you more than you expected.. For instance, keying in Ward looking for a person whose last name is Ward, will give you all last name Wards, plus last names like GoWARD, plus all first name Wards plus a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated people, but if you look at their unit, you will see the word forWARD. Not exactly what you wanted, but it will probably be fewer than the 100 records that are in the table.. The search box is not case sensitive. After doing such a search, you can restore the full table listing by clicking the X'd out eyeglasses icon.
You can also do a refined search using the Filters function accessed by clicking the eyeglass icon. The refined search, like the quick search, will extract only those records meeting your criteria from the data base. Suppose you wanted to extract just the Marines from the list. You can select the field of "Branch" with an operator of "Equals" and type in the phrase you want to match.. in this case "U.S. Marines" without the quotes. This will give you all "regular service" Marines, but not all the Marines.. Since there exists the possibility of Marine reserves being in the list, you may want to use an operator of "Like", again without the quotes, and a phrase to match of "U.S. Marines%".. The "%" sign is a wild card and represents any number of unknown characters.. In effect, you have indicated you wanted to find all records that 'begin' with "U.S. Marines" regardless of what comes afterward, if anything. This will find all records with U.S. Marines and all records U.S. Marines Reserve in the branch field... Refined searches will usually produce a list considerably smaller than the starting list. If you have any difficulty getting the results you want, please do your best to figure it out.. I don't really have the time to hand walk 10 or 1000 people through how to do an effective search.
I tried to be consistant in my spelling and formatting to make your searches more effective. This holds true in all fields EXCEPT the unit field, where various abbreviations had to be used to accommodate length restrictions.. Also, the DoD dispatches may not always accurately list a casualty's full unit designation.
In branches of service column, it is ALWAYS :
- U.S. Marines, not U.S. Marine. all other branches are singular.
- it is always RESERVE, not reserves,
- it is always U.S Army Nat. Guard or U.S. Air Nat. Guard, not ANG or National Guard...
- dates are always yyyy-mm-dd.
If you click the print icon, your current list will be presented in printable format, in whatever the last order sorted or searched was. You can then print off this listing for your own use. Unfortunately, the width of the table even exceeds paper in the portrait position.. I'll try to work on that..
Good Luck.. Hope this is helpful to someone..
God Bless,
Ron Keller
