I think you are referring to the "read only: no search" property in the IB_Query editor.
It means that you can't enter data in taht field while in search mode, so you can't search using values in that field.
If you want to prevent a user for performing search upon certain fields, set them to "no search".
regards
Marco Menardi

--- In IBObjects@y..., Raymond Kennington <raymondk@c...> wrote:
> What does it mean to make a field read-only when searching?
> --
> Raymond Kennington
> Programming Solutions
> W2W Team B