The Celebrity Finder in AutoSort

The celebrity finder can be accessed through various locations in the program and is used to quicky locate an existing celebrity by performing a database wide search.

The Celebrity Finder Window

 

Filter Keywords - This is where you enter the search string.

Several keywords can be used at the same time to narrow down the search results, provided that you separate them with spaces.  All keywords must be found in the celebrity name for a match to be returned.

The finder makes no regard to capitalization or keyword order while performing the search.  The keywords can match anywhere in a celebrity name, not only at the beginning of a word.  It does not use the 'Whole word' or 'Beginning of word" methods.

 

Perform phonetic "sounds like" search - Changes the way the keywords are compared with celebrity names in the database.

PHONETIC SEARCH "OFF"

The finder simply attempts to match all the keywords regardless of order, capitalization or overlap.


Hint:  Try using as few letters as possible to perform a search, getting the spelling right for a celebrity name is anything but trivial.  Using this method helps you find celeb names that might be spelted differently than you think.

Hint:  Try restrincting your keywords to parts of the name that can't possibly be spelled differently.  In the example above, using the "cl" keyword to find "Claudia Schiffer" isn't such a good choice because "Claudia" could have been spelted "Klaudia".  "di" or "ia" would have been better choices.  If these return to many matches, use more keywords.  For the above example we could have used "di ia if fer" to find "Claudia Schiffer".

Hint:  The keywords *can* overlap within the celebrity name.  Using the keywords "if fer" is better that using "iffer" since it will match both "Schiffer" and "Schifer"

 

PHONETIC SEARCH "ON"

The finder first converts your keywords to phonetic strings and compares them to the celebrity names.  Matches are returned when the keywords "sound like" the celebrity name.  This option is very usefull to find a celebrity when you're not sure how to spell the name.

The drawback of this feature is that phonetics grocely reduces the uniqueness of the search keywords, adding a lot of 'fuzz' to the search.  This may yield a lot of eroneous matches.  The shorter the keywords and/or celeb names, the worst it gets.

The phonetic algorithm can only be accurate if you type the entire name you're searching for, using partial keywords is very innacurate and *will* return unexpected and unrelated results.

 

The Results List - This list shows the search results and dynamically updates itself as you edit the text in the Filter Keywords.

When the desired celebrity appears in the list, select it and then click the OK button.

Hint:  Double-clicking on the celebrity name performs the same operation.

Note:  The same celebrity name might appear more than once in the results list.  This happens when aliases are defined for a celebrity.  Selecting any one of those aliases will do the trick.

 

The New... Button - If an existing celebrity cannot be found, you can quickly add a new celebrity to the database with this button.

Since you've probably typed most of the celebrity name in the Filter Keywords, those keywords will be exported to the Storage Folder text in the blank celebrity editor window.  Once you're done creating the new celebrity, it will automatically be selected in the finder for you.

For more information about adding new or editing celebrities in the database, see The Database Editor and The Celebrity Editor.

 

The Recall Last Button - This is used to quickly repeat the same search as the last time you used the finder window.

Note that this button will only be available if you have successfully used the finder window since you've started the program.

 

The OK Button - Closes the finder window and retuns the selected celebrity to the caller.

The caller is the part of AutoSort you used to invoke the finder.  The action the caller performs with the selected celebrity is caller dependant.

Note that you must select a celebrity in the Results List before using the OK button.

 

The Cancel Button - Closes the finder window and cancels finder usage.