changing sort sequence (like tab order)

[Guest]

Today data is entered into a table in the order it needs to appear on
reports. there is no well defined sort key such as alphabetical, or age, or
address or anything. If the user is very careful and enters the items in the
correct sequence all is OK. I there is a desigh change or the user made a
mistake the data has to be reentered so the reports look OK.

One solution is to add a sort key and enter the sort value in increments of
5. To enter a dataitem between 15 and 20 the user cna enter the sort key as
17. This works but is a real pain.

Is there an ad-in, shareware, code, whaever, that will let me click and
drag a record shown in a subform to a different position. and retain that
position the next time the form is opened? The popup window that allows me
to change the form tab order in access design mode is an example of what I
need to do.

Help

Steve S.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Steve

"Behind the curtain", Access is renumbering the sort order of the controls.
You can verify this by changing the order and inspecting the TabOrder
properties of the controls. This is akin to your 'sort key' approach.

Access stores data in tables, something like "buckets o' data". Unless YOU
include a sortable field, Access chooses its own order.

I'm not aware of a free/shareware tool, but you could try using a search
engine...

Have you considered exporting the data to Excel and manually moving it
around before printing?

Good luck

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP

 

[Guest]

Yes, i am aware that access sets the TabOrder property depending on the
position the fields are in when the popup is closed. what I need is the
process (algorithm)access uses to determine what the new order is. It has to
change every taborder value from the lowest number changed all the way up to
the highest or last stop.

Steve S.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

I'll recommend again that you do some searching on-line. I'm not privy to
any behind-the-curtain algorithms Access may be using. Perhaps someone has
an ActiveX control that can do what you want.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP

 

[John Nurick]

Hi Steve,

If you can rely on the records being *entered* in the correct order, you
can probably use a timestamp to retrieve them in the same order. Try
adding a date/time field called Created, and set its default value to
=Now()

Then use a query to return the records, sorted on Created.