There are different namespaces for tokens - default, submitted, and environment.
You're running into the issue because you're using the "default" tokens. These are the ones we normally use as they are updated on the fly, whereas the submitted tokens are only updated after clicking the submit button.
You can refer to these tokens using the namespace followed by a colon, eg:
Default: $tok1$
Submitted: $submitted:tok1$
I've tried to understand the values you've put for the tokens and made an alternative dashboard showing the use of submitted tokens:
<form version="1.1" theme="light">
<label>answers</label>
<fieldset submitButton="true" autoRun="false">
<input type="dropdown" token="tok1" searchWhenChanged="false">
<label>Tok1</label>
<choice value="All">*</choice>
<choice value="" "AND upper(STATUS)=upper('Active')"">Y</choice>
<choice value="" "AND upper(STATUS)=upper('Inactive')"">N</choice>
<prefix>Status="</prefix>
<default>*</default>
</input>
<input type="text" token="tok2" searchWhenChanged="false">
<label>UserID</label>
<default></default>
<prefix> AND UserID=\"*" + upper(</prefix>
<suffix>) + "*"</suffix>
</input>
</fieldset>
<row>
<panel id="table_1">
<html><h2>Using $$tok1$$</h2><table><tr><td><strong>$$tok1$$=</strong></td><td><textarea>$tok1$</textarea></td></tr><tr><td><strong>$$tok2$$=</strong></td><td><textarea>$tok2$</textarea></td></tr></table>
<style>textarea{padding: 4px; font-size:16px;resize:none;width: 300px;border: 1px solid black;}
div[id^="table"] td{border:1px solid black;padding: 4px;} div[id^="table"]{width: fit-content; }
</style>
</html>
</panel>
</row>
<row>
<panel id="table_2">
<html><h2>Using $$submitted:tok1$$</h2><table><tr><td><strong>$$submitted:tok1$$=</strong></td><td><textarea>$submitted:tok1$</textarea></td></tr><tr><td><strong>$$submitted:tok2$$=</strong></td><td><textarea>$submitted:tok2$</textarea></td></tr></table></html>
</panel>
</row>
<row>
<panel>
<html><h2>The Search</h2>| search * $submitted:tok1$ $submitted:tok2$ </html>
</panel>
</row>
</form>By putting your evals and conditionals directly into the values the form should work:
Hopefully that gets you closer to what you're after.
There is another way to tackle this - but I don't quite understand your search. It's almost SPL but not quite. If the above isn't what you're after, can you explain your search a bit more?
