How can I search in a row of data in a program which lacks a search feature?

[brt]

Hi,

For my work, I regularly have to fill in data to update the system which regulates the locks and alarms for the company I work for. I have to assign permissions to people so they can or cannot enter certain buildings, open doors, set alarms etc. When a new employee has been hired or has left, I open up the systems program, which is not really more than an excel-like scheet with persons and their ID number, info, permissions etc. I have to remove or add that person, or change their permissions. Now the problem is, since this program is really old and outdated, I can't sort the sheet on name or number and there's no search feature included in the program.
I seriously have to manually scan the sheet searching for the name of that person.
It's also not ordered by alphabet and the list consists of around 600 people. I think i don't have to tell you that this is a really frustrating thing to do.

Normally in windows explorer or anything else, you can just type one or more keys and the selection automagically jumps to the first item in the list that starts with the typed characters, unfortunately that doesn't work for this program. But i'm pretty sure there must be a way to kind of ctrl-f in this program, with either a windows feature or a 3rd party app. This would be way way more efficient and would save me a hell of a lot of work. So like the title says, how could I search in this program which itself lacks search features?
For anyone that can help me, i thank you from the bottom of my heart..

 

[getochkn]

No, if it's not built into the custom software, then no other program is going to add it.

Now this program might save this file in something that can be read, like excel, comma limited file, database, or something.

 

[brt]

No, if it's not built into the custom software, then no other program is going to add it.
Now this program might save this file in something that can be read, like excel, comma limited file, database, or something.

Thanks for your reply. Are you completely sure of that? There's no 3rd party program that can, like, mark your search term in an active window? Because that seems quite simple to me to be honest, would be a pity if that's not an option.. And no I can't export it to csv, pdf or something else. I can 'print' it and then save it as pdf but that takes quite some time because of the program itself.

 

[getochkn]

I didn't say export it, but it has to save the info somewhere and that file that it saves it in might be readable by something. A lot of older programs used things like dBase as a backend but custom frontend.

 

[getochkn]

I didn't say export it, but it has to save the info somewhere and that file that it saves it in might be readable by something. A lot of older programs used things like dBase as a backend but custom frontend.

 

[brt]

I didn't say export it, but it has to save the info somewhere and that file that it saves it in might be readable by something. A lot of older programs used things like dBase as a backend but custom frontend.

When I have to change something, I have to load the database from the server and I have to upload it to it when i'm done.
There's no save in between if that's what you mean?.. Maybe it does create a temporarily file but I wouldn't have a idea where and if it's readable or not.

 

[basroil]

Assuming this is a work program, contact IT/a higher up and request additional functionality. There is no way to add functionality if the program doesn't support extensions of some sort, not without some serious and potentially dangerous code injection after intensive reverse engineering.