Finding records except those matching criteria
You can omit records while performing a find. In other words, you can find information in your database that “does not equal” your specified criteria. For example, you can find all invoices except those created in the past 30 days.
To find records that don’t match criteria:
1.
In Find mode, type criteria for the records to omit.
For example, to find all sales records except those for the city of London, type London in the City field.
2.
Click Omit in the layout bar.
3.
Click Perform Find in the status toolbar.
To find some records while omitting others:
1.
In Find mode, type the criteria for the records to find.
For example, to find vendors in the state of New York, except those in the city of Albany, start by typing New York in the State field.
2.
Click New Request in the status toolbar.
3.
Type criteria for the records to exclude, and click Omit.
To exclude Albany, you would type Albany in the City field and click Omit.
4.
Click Perform Find.
Notes
 •
You can have omit criteria in more than one request.
 •
FileMaker Pro works through the requests in the order you create them. For example, in a Clients database with clients in the US and France:
 •
If the first request finds all clients in Paris and the second request omits all clients in the US, the found set contains all clients in Paris, France but none in Paris, Texas or anywhere else in the US.
 •
If the order of the requests is reversed (the first request omits all clients in the US and the second request finds all clients in Paris), the found set includes all customers in France and in Paris, Texas, but no records for clients elsewhere in the US.
 •
To omit a related record from a portal row (or set of related records), you must change the relationship or the value in at least one of the match fields so that the record is no longer related. For more information about related fields, see Working with related tables and files.
 •
You can also omit records from a found set after performing a find. See Hiding records from a found set and viewing hidden records.
 •
You can open another window to perform different find requests on the same data. For more information, see Opening multiple windows per file.
 •
You can save a request for later use. See Saving a find request.
Related topics 
Finding duplicate values
Was this topic helpful? Send feedback.