# Creating and configuring custom user fields

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-and-configuring-custom-user-fields/113192
**Category:** Site Management
**Tags:** how-to, user-custom-fields, users
**Created:** [April 2, 2019, 1:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-and-configuring-custom-user-fields/113192 "2019-04-02T01:42:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 89

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### Author: ![one1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/one1/32/493591_2.png) [@one1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/one1)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2026, 11:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-and-configuring-custom-user-fields/113192/89 "2026-04-08T11:33:46Z")

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> [@Discourse](#):
>
> **Searchable** : Enables searching for users based on this field’s value in the user directory

I have a custom field and I have set it as searchable. However on the user page `/u` the only search field says “filter by username”. When I search for the contents of the custom field, no results show.

I can see the values in the list (I turned the column on in the customizer) So I can see that those values clearly exist.

What am I doing wrong?

Strangely, the values of the custom field are links, e.g. `u?cards=no&name=Female&order=likes_received` and when clicked it runs a search for the value in the `name` field. And it returns nothing.

These are the prefs for the field:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/0/1/d/01d110bfd54a7a140f1416d80c46e9c189b8b50c.png)

Also (I don’t know if this is a clue) when I sort by that custom field column, whether it is forward or backward, there are always users with empty fields at the top of the list (different users) . Only a small number of users have content in this field, but I would have expected all the empties to be at the top _or_ the bottom of the list, not both.

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