# How to make it easier to select an item in a very long list of choices inside a select\_one\_external in a repeat in ODK collect

**URL:** <https://forum.getodk.org/t/how-to-make-it-easier-to-select-an-item-in-a-very-long-list-of-choices-inside-a-select-one-external-in-a-repeat-in-odk-collect/26856>\
**Category:** Support\
**Tags:** form-design, odk-collect\
**Created:** [May 27, 2020, 11:30pm UTC](https://forum.getodk.org/t/how-to-make-it-easier-to-select-an-item-in-a-very-long-list-of-choices-inside-a-select-one-external-in-a-repeat-in-odk-collect/26856 "2020-05-27T23:30:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![mathieubossaert](https://getodk.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.getodk.org/mathieubossaert/32/6131_2.png) [@mathieubossaert](https://forum.getodk.org/u/mathieubossaert)\
**Post date:** [May 28, 2020, 6:57am UTC](https://forum.getodk.org/t/how-to-make-it-easier-to-select-an-item-in-a-very-long-list-of-choices-inside-a-select-one-external-in-a-repeat-in-odk-collect/26856/3 "2020-05-28T06:57:05Z")

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Hi @RaffyM and welcome in the ODK community 😀  
Yes you can do something close to autocomplete search.  
Because [select-widget-with-autocomplete](https://docs.getodk.org/form-question-types/#select-widget-with-autocomplete) will not be able to work in such a big list you will have to use the search() function.  
But its documentation page needs to be completed

See this discussion :

> [@Search() function with external CSV file](https://forum.getodk.org/t/search-function-with-external-csv-file/21505/2):
>
> Hi Bruno. Welkome to thé odk community. You will need to make use of search() options such as startswith() or contains(). We use it to filter matching lines into 400000 species name. For the moment the documentation page is not complete ans you'll find the description of those options here : [Looking for an old documentation page about search() function](https://forum.getodk.org/t/looking-for-an-old-documentation-page-about-search-function/20594) "search(csvName, 'startswith', columnsToSearch, searchText)": This search expression includes all distinct rows that start with the specifi…

Here you can see how we use it to collect species data : [ODK to collect species and habitats localities, as pressure and threats to ecosystems](https://forum.getodk.org/t/odk-to-collect-species-and-habitats-localities-as-pressure-and-threats-to-ecosystems/26332)  
I just edit the showcase to complete the part relative to this.

![](https://getodk.b-cdn.net/uploads/default/original/2X/f/f0bc8e20175576a26d985dd8f3ace4cf87f2d539.png)

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