Excluding certain characters from a sort

[JGaller]

I've built my own DVD library database and am having trouble figuring out how
to sort the titles and make the sort "overlook" the word "The" at the
beginning of a title, so that ... for example "The Matrix", would show up in
the M's not the T's.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Allen Browne]

Add an extra field to your table to hold the title as it should be sorted.

This is the only way to cope with all the kinds of sorting scenarios you
might want, e.g.:
- Ignoring specific words (like The and A in your example.)
- Handling strange characters (e.g. I Heart Huckabee)
- McDonald sorting into MacDonald
- Solving the problems/inconsistencies Access has with some chars (e.g.
dashes.)

You can use the AfterUpdate event procedure of the title text box to assign
the same thing to the SortAs field. And indexing the SortAs field will give
you lightening sorts (even with hundreds of thousands of titles.)