Custom Search Include/Exclude error message

Question

Using Civi linked to joomla web to manage our membership and various mailing lists.

I would like to be able to use a custom search function to find, for example, individuals who are not members, or individuals who are not in our 'newsletter' contact group. Contacts who are not in a give contact group.

I imagine the Custom Search Include/Exclude function would be best for this but when I select this from the Custom Search List I get an error message 'At least one Group and Tag must be present for Custom Group / Tag search.'

Can anyone advise what this means and how I might conduct such a search?

Many thanks

Answer 1

This error is displayed when you don't have any groups OR tags available on your site.

• Check if you see any groups listed in civicrm/group?reset=1.
• Similarly, check if you have at least one tag available in civicrm/tag?reset=1.

In your case, I think you don't have any tags created on your site. As a hacky workaround - you can create a dummy tag from Contacts -> New Tag menu in order to get rid of the error on the search screen.

Answer 2

Sounds like you need to create a Group with 'everyone' and another Group with 'Members' and then use the Include/Exclude Group option to get what you are wanting.