Re: Unsort a valuelist

Bill wrote:
In article <180820071329512947%helpful_harry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Helpful Harry <helpful_harry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1187326755.052982.237970@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, DS
<dsomar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have a couple of valuelists which I want to be filled by field
values. This is not a problem; however, FM sorts the values in the
valuelist regardless of how I enter them in the field. This is not
desired.

Any ideas on how to fix it or turn it off?
You can't "unsort" a Value List. FileMaker specifically sorts the
values so that it makes them easier to find during data entry ... but
unfortunately alphabetical / numerical sorting isn't always the best
idea.

The only way sort a value list in a different order is to use a second
field in the Value List definition and sort by this field. You can
enter numbers into the second field and the Value List will be sorted
in the order you want.

The only problem is that these second field values are also displayed
in the field alongside the first fields. This means that instead of
getting a Value List displayed like:

Fred
Wilma
Pebbles
Barney
Betty
Bam-Bam

you will have to have a Value List displayed like either:

01 Fred OR Fred 01
02 Wilma Wilma 02
03 Pebbles Pebbles 03
04 Barney Barney 04
05 Betty Betty 05
06 Bam-Bam Bam-Bam 06

Of course, you can achieve the same affect by simply adding the numbers
to the front of the data in the original field.

Helpful Harry Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

In FMP 7 and later you can make it display the second field only.



and there is an interesting/usefull consequence of this, particularly for adding related data. The VL could be defined as field 1: filed_ID, and the second as field_value (description...), with only show field 2

the actual field on the layout to which the value list is attached, is made grab_ID, and the value list attached. The VL (F2) shows the (related) names (Patient name, part description...) , but the actual field on the layout grabs the related ID, while displaying the related name.


So in table A, one may want to add a related Item (table B), and this can be done by just one field in table A to hard code the (related) item ID. At the same time the ID field in table A, with the attached VL, will display the related name details. No need for grabing the name and looking up the ID... Haven't discovered any gotchas. I find this a really usefull technique.

regards

Chris



.

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