Wildcard selection of characters from a given file name

[#1]

I built a file for teaching a Jr.Sr. level college class. the first dat set we are using is the Federal Reserve Board's "SHAP"  file of household financial experience.  There are hundreds of variables, all named with descriptive names.  That may  have been my error, thinking that substantive description was a better tool than names that looked like auto license numbers.

The menu takes a long time to process when selecting variables.   We do not have good memories of where each variable is in the menu column list.  Is there a search function with which we can type in the core of the variable name and get the location in the menu?  For example, type "house" to search for "Weighted household income?"

[#2 · Accepted solution]

You can use the Column Viewer to do such selections.  The Column Viewer is available from the red trangle in the Columns Panel, or from the Cols pull down menu.

These same selection criteria are also available in all dialog boxes for the diffferent platforms that have column selections.

[#3]

Hi Jim,

Is there a quick way to use wildcard like in the Excel filtering?

E.g. from column names below, I'd like to search and select columns Height*2018 or even more than one wildcard.

Height_ProdA_2018

Height_ProdB_2018

Height_ProdC_2018

Height_ProdA_2017

Height_ProdB_2017

Height_ProdC_2017

Width_ProdA_2018

Width_ProdB_2018

Width_ProdC_2018

Width_ProdA_2017

Width_ProdB_2017

Width_ProdC_2017