Allow the subtraction of one list from another, i.e. a given contact must meet some criteria but not another.

That's a good point, thanks. But this is not something we are working on now, so it'll stay here for a while.

I'm not sure if this is the same problem. I have a drop-down menu field that I want to make sure is not left empty. It is admin only. I had to save a search where I put each of six menu items with IS NOT in them to find the blanks. Luckily there were only six choices and I can save the search so I don't have to recreate it. However, I am used to being able to search for a blank field.

Thanks.

I know this is an old thread so I'm hoping there is now a solution to this. I moved to WA from another member website with about 650 members. I know that MANY of them have never logged in on the WA site and I would like to contact these members to make sure they know how and that the site has, in fact, moved. Can I search for last login:never?

There is also another thread - http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8825653-add-boolean-logic-to-advanced-search-6642 - similar to this. I keep this one just to focus on NOT operation support which is different from others (like AND and OR)

The problem is not in SQL but how to present search to a non-developer in way that is clear to use. Introducing AND and OR also means making grouping of conditions (which part is for OR and which is for AND) and overall UI will be very complicated.

But I agree that this is a very nice to have ability to make sophisticated searches that gives a way to use AND, OR and NOT.

This is a common search scenario. WA needs Boolean logic capabilities for its searches. It is an SQL database, so such functionality should be available to the developers.

In this case they are searching a membership directory and want to be able to search for members who represent fiction writers but NOT children's fiction. They have a database field called "Categories" that is a long list of checkboxes they can choose from. The directory includes this field in the display, so it's searchable using a keyword search. Among the categories are "fiction" and "children's fiction". So typing fiction into the keyword search would return both 'fiction' and 'children's fiction' in the results. If they could type fiction -children in the search field, that would work.

OK, but what was the particular situation when they needed it?

[quote user="Chief_Apricot"]

Has anyone else come across other situations when NOT would be useful?

[/quote]

I have a client asking me today for a NOT option in Keyword Search. FWIW, I like how Google uses the hyphen prefix for NOT (e.g., dog NOT cat is: dog -cat ).

yep, i realize. but i thought this might be a way to add this functioanlity to the search using the existing UI

Sorry about the UI - might be a bit misleading. <No date> means that date to match to has not been defined, it does not mean date=empty

At the moment there is no way to do advanced search for records with empty login date.

yes I ran into this problem today when adding new members via upload also. I wanted to email them to tell them how to login the first time. The search criteria already has a way to specify:

Last Login Date Is <No date>

but it doesn't do what i'd expect. it seems to return every member.

Not specifically yet, but I can easily imagine scenarios where it would be useful. Every Boolean search has a NOT option.

Interesting point.

Has anyone else come across other situations when NOT would be useful?