How to find “anything” (but data) in Business Central

It’s the start of Search September and time to share the first of many “find and search” tools in Business Central.

Let’s start at the basics for anyone new, or anyone experienced that may have forgotten more than some of us will ever know ;-).

You are working in Business Central, and you need to find a list, report, card, or just about anything. You’ve saved frequently used pages by bookmarking them, but your bookmarked list is now 3 rows long and you can’t remember what you’ve saved there. You are trying to find the Aged Payables Report in your navigation bar and menu. There has got to be a better way than this? Well, sometimes it’s just easier to find it again by using ALT + Q – System Search.

In the beginning, many others called this method of search just plain old “search” while I called it “Tell me..” I did this because that is how the early documentation referred to it and because BC has other fields labeled “Search” and it’s not this one (more about this in another post). But thankfully, recently it was explained to me that this “Tell me..” is a System Search. I have also heard others just refer to it as ALT + Q. I think this is a great reference because you don’t need to know “where” it is on the page, the name tells you the keys to invoke it. How simple is that! Thank you Erik Hougaard – https://www.hougaard.com/

ALT + Q System Search allows us to type what we are searching for, then choose from results including selections on the current page, in lists and other pages, tasks, reports, documentation and apps available in AppSource.

By typing in “Cust”, I found 6 available actions on the current page, 50 other pages and tasks, 50 reports and 500 items in AppSource. Lists can quickly be expanded to see all that is available.

This is a great way to find reports that are available. Type in Item, or Cust, or Vend, etc. to see reports available with these in characters in their name.

Subscribe to my blog today so you don’t miss a post, there are many more to come. I hope that by sharing a couple of these “search and find” tips each week throughout the month of September, you will be able to memorize each one and become more proficient in your use of Business Central. Not all of these tips will be keyboard shortcuts, but I thought you might find a link to the Business Central Keyboard Shortcuts graphic helpful.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/media/keyboard_shortcuts.pdf