If you need to do an advanced member search - for example, finding all members with a specific member type in specific states - then you'll want to use the Member Search page. To get to this page, navigate to Members > Member Search.
By default, listings of your Individual records will appear on screen, 10 at a time. You can choose to show more or fewer members per page using the dropdown at the bottom:
You will probably want to search to narrow down which members appear, although you can also browse your complete listing of members without searching.
Advanced searches are performed using Smart Groups, which are also used to generate reports and email lists. Smart Groups allow you to find and list members based on any number and combination of criteria you wish. To learn more about defining Smart Groups, see Smart Groups.
To use an existing Smart Group for a search, choose which group category you'd like to use from the first dropdown. You can choose the default, All groups, and then pick any group you wish, or you can narrow down to a specific category of groups (see Group and participation types for more information). Then choose the actual group from the second list.
Once you click the group you wish to view, the matching members will be displayed. See Using member search results for what you can do with the matching members.
If you wish to define a new Smart Group rather than using an existing one from the list, click the manage groups link from the Related Tasks area on the left. This is a great way to create complex searches that you can save and re-use. See Smart Groups for more information.
You can combine a Smart Group filter with a field-based search described below.
If you don't have a group created that you can search by, or if you
wish to narrow a group down further, you also have the option of doing
an advanced search by one or more fields. Just
click the 
add filter link under
the Smart Group pulldowns. This
will allow you to choose a field to search by. Once
you choose a field, you'll have a text box or pulldown to enter the value
you wish to search.
You can also click the button to add another field to
search by, or you can click the 
button to remove an existing
search field. Using
these techniques, you can search by several criteria at once.
For example, to find all Associate members or affiliates who joined on June 15, 2007, you would set up your search criteria as follows.
Once you choose your fields, type in your search criteria, and click , any member who matches will be listed on the Search Results page, as described in Using member search results.
There are definitely limitations to this advanced search. For example, you cannot search by date range, and you cannot search for members matching two or more values for a field (for example, someone who is a Regular, Associate, or Student member). However, you can perform these more advanced searches by creating a Smart Group (see Characteristic Smart Groups).
Note: When searching on a text field, such as First Name or Preferred Email, the system does a "starts with" search. That is, if you want to search for all members with a yahoo.com email address, you cannot type yahoo.com into the search field. However, if you put a percent sign (%) in front of the search term, the system will do a "contains" search. So to search for all yahoo.com preferred email addresses, for example, simply search for %yahoo.com as shown below:
You can quickly locate members whose last name or organization name starts with a specific letter of the alphabet. Just click the appropriate letter from the area shown below.
Here's how the find-by-letter search works:
If you are searching people (that is, if the People tab is active), then this will find people whose last names begin with the letter in question.
If you are searching organizations (that is, the Organizations tab is active), then this will find organizations whose names begin with the letter in question.
You can also click ALL to bring up all records, effectively clearing your find-by-letter search criteria. In either case, all matching members will be listed on the Search Results page, as described in Using member search results.
Note: This alphabetical filter works together with other filters. For example, if you choose a Smart Group as a filter, and then click the letter P, it will only show members in that smart group whose last names/org names begin with P.