Search contact by "contains" detail

[AndrewK51122]

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?

[DavidS0262]

Please provide an expanded ability to search our subscriber databases. Your system used to provide this ability. Now, we have to know the exact email address, input the @ sign, etc., etc.

Searching has simply become too difficult.

Please, just provide the ability to search for a letter, combination of letters, a portion of an email, etc. I want to eliminate competitors, people who subscribe from organizations I don't want on my list and so on.

Please and thank you.

[AndyE5]

The search function needs to be improved. If I enter Smith, the search results should give me anyone who's first or last name is Smith AND any emails addresses that contain Smith (e.g., smith@abc.com or johnson@smith.com). It should also report all results for a given search or domain (e.g., @smith.com should report all email addresses from that domain). The search currently requires me to enter the exact full email to find the contact I want. If I enter only a partial, I get "no results" from my 2100 email subscribers. Overall I like the contact management system, but the search has never worked that way I expect a modern search engine should work.

[BioPharmGuy]

The contact search feature is pretty bad. I can search for a domain that I know is present and it comes up with nothing. Now I searched for a string that I know appears in the nondomain part of someone's email and that returned nothing too. Pretty bad.

[Caitlin_M]

Hi @BioPharmGuy. Are you making sure to select Email Domain in the dropdown next to the search box? Also, you will need to add anything that comes after the domain such as .com or .org for the search to populate with results.

[BioPharmGuy]

I didnt realize that was a thing. Still doesn't explain why it doesn't return a string that I know is in an email. Can it only search for a string at the beginning of an email or name?

[Caitlin_M]

Hi @BioPharmGuy. That is correct. The search feature as it is right now does not have a "contains" element to it and will only search for the beginning or end of a domain or other selection from the dropdown. We have an open thread that has this feature request so I will merge this there.

[General_AIre]

I agree - we need to be able to search by the email domain:  @gmail, or @google or @lastname.  I used to be able to do this, but you removed this ability.  I'm very displeased.

[CoachJoeT]

Can’t believe that constant contact does not have a partial email search method.  That there is no wildcard method to search my customer base using only part of the email. If I can’t read a customer’s writing and can’t read the first two letters that I can’t search for remainder of email

[NikkiB787]

The search engine for a contact last name if its a partail spelling your system should still pull some type of data associated with the spelling of last name not the first several characthers we feel. Reason being last name are often spelled incorrectly.

[Caitlin_M]

We're updating the status of this idea to more accurately reflect its current status with our engineering team and also made slight changes to the subject line in order for it to be more easily found. We can't guarantee a commitment to include a "contains" type of search functionality but it should indicate some awareness that we have heard your feedback and could be taken under consideration for a future release.