It seems that when setting a contact/member's address you can choose for the "State" field either the full state name or the standard two-character abbreviation.

When adding the "State" field to a Member Directory search, you have to search specifically for EITHER the state name or abbrevation.

It seems to me that there should be an option (or perhaps it should be by default) that the results returned for any one particularly state should include BOTH those contacts with the state name and state abbreviation.

Why would you ever want to have separate database stores for the two different naming conventions?

I understand the need to be able to detect and process both types, since contacts may be bulk imported with "State" fields in either formats.

But once in the database, why not allow Search Results to pull both types?

Right now, if I have a contact for Minnesota with the "State" field set to "MN", when a user searches in a Member Directory for "Minnesota", zero results are returned. Each member would have to know:

1. First search for "Minnesota" & if no results then...
2. Search by "MN"