Files out of order

[Jeff Snyder]

I have two problems that have come up today. The first is that when I press the order button (z..a, or a..z) the order of my files are not consecutive. We are ordering by a number and there seems to be strange groupings. For instance I will get numbers for instance 5-12 then 2-4 then 13-20 then 1. Very strange.

another problem that has reared its head is that my linking field to my customer information is no longer working consistently. For instance, some companies will not be looked up. I have the phone number being the linking field, and for now 3 companies, which are in the customer table with all fields intact, will not show on my form. Many others do so I cannot figure this out. Has anyone experienced a similar situation? I am at a loss.

Jeff

[Stan Mathews]

RE: Files out of order

Jeff,

The file order you mention seems to be inverse alphabetical of the numbers as character fields. In other words, ascending order of the files you mention would be:
1, 13-20, 2-4, 5-12.

If you wanted a more "numerical order" the files should be named as:

01, 13-20, 02-04, 05-12.

If you want to see this in action create a dummy table with only a character field and populate a hundred records with numerical digits 1 to 100. If you sort on this field the order will be:

1,10,11,12,...,19,100,20,21,....,29,30.....

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Files out of order

Jeff,

Is the field you use to 'order' your records a character field or a numeric field? I think this will make a difference in how the A-Z and Z-A functions work.

For example,

If you have three records each of which has a character field in it as follows:

rec1 10
rec2 20
rec3 110

An A-Z sort on the character field would order them like this:

rec1 10
rec3 110
rec2 20


A Z-A sort on the character field would order them like this:

rec2 20
rec3 110
rec1 10

You get a different sort order with numeric fields. Assuming the same values, but with them in numeric fields, instead of character fields...

An A-Z sort on the numeric fields would look like this:

rec1 10
rec2 20
rec3 110

A Z-A sort on the numeric field would look like this:

rec3 110
rec2 20
rec1 10

These differences are probably due to how the field values are stored in the table. Numeric values are sorted numerically... character values appear to be sorted by their ASCII values, from left to right.

As for your second issue, with the misbehaving link, try reindexing the child table.

-- tom cone