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Search contact by "contains" detail

I am trying to search a contact by a detail of their email or last name, all of which I could select for in your old template, but this feature seems to have disappeared. Where is it? How am I supposed to do a detailed search now in your system?

43 Comments
RobertaC477
Marketing Expert
AWESOME improvement on the searching for contacts. I love it. Still needs an improvement though. When it searches, it only searched from the beginning of the name or email, and does not find the searched for text if it is imbedded in the email addres. EX.... I have a contact with the email scubaaddicts@xxx.xx So I search on "addic" and it does not find it. If I type in scuba, it is found. if I seartch for "with", it does not find divewithroberta@gmail.com. Thank you
ShipShore
Rookie

Please delete the advanced search function. Sometimes I only know one part of an email address but there is no "contains" option. Or please revert back to the old way where you can do a free search of all the contacts without specific fields involved. 

NoahG575
Rookie

Agreed... I type a name and record number for the 'Company' field. So one contact could include "Client 1234".   

 

If I search for '1234' - no result.  ugh. I just realized this and wasted over an hour of my time entering data that cannot be used.....

...and now I have to figure out a hack to circumvent this crappy search GUI, because I cannot use Custom Fields either... I have to enter another ticket to address that problem - Custom Fields can NOT be searched at all.

 

This seems basic and I am disappointed that a company focused on interacting with contacts has such a craptastic Customer search.

 

[edit 2020-08-10: I realize there's an advanced search, but the operators should include "has" or "contains" (in addition to is/starts with/is not/is blank)... or at least expand the auto populated search results to include the 'has' results.]

[edit 2 2020-08-10:  Wildcard search is a thing... it's just not advertized.... use "*" as an operator. https://community.constantcontact.com/t5/Managing-Contacts/How-to-search-using-quot-contains-quot-in...]

HeatherT383
Campaign Contributor
Really hard to find contacts by first and/or last name
JonL940
Rookie
I have constructed lists for 100,000+ emails with a certain logic. Your changes have eliminated me being able to function! In particular your changes to the search and eliminating the "Advanced Search" is a disaster! Please Please revert or give us the option of keeping the old platform. so I can run my business efficiently. Otherwise it is time for me to find a new email provider as the ability to search/sort/reassign large data sets with multiple search criteria is completely gone. Very unhappy camper.
Frankie_P
Moderator
Status changed to: Voting Open

Hi @AndrewK51122 at this time our updated contact management search tool can only search for addresses that 'begins with' or 'ends with' the search detail entered. It is a feature request we are tracking to have the ability of searching for contacts the way you have described. Because of this we have opened up your idea so other users can weigh in as well.

Frankie_P
Moderator
Status changed to: Open Questions

Hi @JonL940 what logic are you looking for when viewing your contacts? Also, what details are you searching for through the previous advanced function?

AmyR167
Rookie

Anyone else hate the new update to contacts?  the search field is now basically useless.  you can no longer search a partial for anything.  you need to enter the entire domain name, including .com  I used to put in a partial name or a partial company name in the search field and anything with that letter configuration would show up.  now you need the entire last name and have to drop down and select name.  or you have to put the entire domain and drop down and select domain.  a quick contacts search is no longer an option.  CONSTANT CONTACT DEVELOPERS - IF YOU ARE LISTENING - PLEASE BRING BACK THE OLD SEARCH CAPABILITIES OF A PARTIAL ACROSS ALL FIELDS.  

RachelM784
Rookie

I very much dislike how you have changed the "Contacts" section of my account. I used to be able to search by typing in a few characters and it would pull up all relevant contacts, and now it does not do that. Now I have to type the exact email address or an entire name before it pulls up the contact. This is a step backward in efficiency. I would highly suggest that you switch this capability back.

PaulineG783
Campaign Contributor
The new Search method is a big step backwards. I see no improvements over the old. I used to be able to search ALL fields for a word, but now I have to select the field.
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