but you have to scroll through EVERY sim in every other neighborhood that you previously entered in order to get to the sim you are looking for
The search button allows you to pull out only the records for a particular neighbourhood, or whatever combination of data you choose to search. Much less scrolling, particularly as you can search on several items at once - such as blond adult romance sims in neighbourhood MyTown with a turn-on of red hair (if, for example, you're looking for a date for your red-haired romance sim who likes blonds). You can then flick backwards and forwards using "previous sim" and "next sim" through the sims that matched your search criteria. The reports generated are based on the sims that matched your search criteria.
It took me a while of using the database before I figured this out - at first I was annoyed because I couldn't work out how to print a report for just one household.
I understand wanting to have different neighbourhoods totally separate in the database as I'm the person who posted on Pegasys' forum about it. I use separate folders for each neighbourhood, each one with the database unzipped into it.