OrderBy Property

Applies To

Form, Query, Report, Table.

Description

You can use the OrderBy property to specify how you want to sort records in a form, query, report, or table.

Setting

The OrderBy property is a string expression that is the name of the field or fields on which you want to sort records. When you use more than one field name, separate the names with a comma (,).

When you set the OrderBy property by entering one or more field names, the records will be sorted in ascending order. Similarly, Visual Basic will sort these fields in ascending order by default.

If you want to sort records in descending order, type DESC at the end of the string expression. For example, to sort customer records in descending order by contact name, set the OrderBy property to “ContactName DESC”.

You can set the OrderBy property in the object’s property sheet, a macro, or using Visual Basic.

Remarks

For reports, the OrderByOn property must be set to Yes to apply the sort order specified by the object’s OrderBy property. For forms, select the field on which you want to order the records and either click the appropriate Sort button on the toolbar, or point to Sort on the Records menu and click the appropriate command on the submenu. You can also set the OrderByOn property for either forms or reports using Visual Basic.

Note When a new object is created, it inherits the RecordSource, Filter, OrderBy, and OrderByOn properties of the table or query it was created from. For forms and reports, inherited filters aren’t automatically applied an object is opened.

See Also

AllowFilters Property, ApplyFilter Action, ApplyFilter Method, Filter Property, OrderByOn Property.