From the Sales Invoice screen:

- to get to the start of the fiscal year:

Press Tab                 (moves to the date)

Press down-arrow     (the next item in the drop-down is the start of the current year).

Tab to the JE line and type in the JE number and press enter.

Tried closing the Sales Journal and opening it again.   The search default is still the beginning of the current fiscal year.   Tabbed to the journal number and typed another one, and searched.  

The version I'm using seems to retain the last used default in that window.

If you mean the Main Sage 50 Window search, no, there doesn't appear to be a way, by design.   But the 'Tab, Down-Arrow' trick seems to work there, too.

Another way to search a JE is just to run a Journal Entry report for the current year, and use control-F to Find it.   J1234   will match J12345 as well, but that's usually not a problem.

I hope that helps, please post back

Darn, you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.  It worked.  I can close out both vendor and sales, and by choosing the drop down calendar date, it stays.  If I enter the date manually, it doesn't.  Now to test it when I close my computer down tonight and start tomorrow.

Well, it is better than nothing, but it only stays there for less than half hour.  If you don't go in and keep looking up invoices, it defaults back to date of starting Sage, not the date you choose from the drop down menu.

If you do a lot of invoice lookup and if you have two screens, another trick is to SAVE the data as LOOKUP . With the LOOKUP data clear out all invoice and inventory tracking up to the current start date. Then open the LOOKUP data on the second screen and if the invoice needs to be adjusted just copy and paste to the LIVE data.

I set this scenario for an auto parts dealership. Made sure the LOOKUP company could not post any invoices by accident.