CollatingOrder Property

Applies To Database object, Field object.

Description

Returns a value that specifies the sequence of the sort order in text for string comparison or sorting (Microsoft Jet workspaces only).

Return Values

The return value is a Long value or constant that can be one of the following values.

Constant	Sort order

dbSortGeneral	General (English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Modern Spanish)
dbSortArabic	Arabic
dbSortChineseSimplified	Simplified Chinese
dbSortChineseTraditional	Traditional Chinese
dbSortCyrillic	Russian
dbSortCzech	Czech
dbSortDutch	Dutch
dbSortGreek	Greek
dbSortHebrew	Hebrew
dbSortHungarian	Hungarian
dbSortIcelandic	Icelandic
dbSortJapanese	Japanese
dbSortKorean	Korean
dbSortNeutral	Neutral
dbSortNorwDan	Norwegian or Danish
dbSortPDXIntl	Paradox International
dbSortPDXNor	Paradox Norwegian or Danish

(continued)

dbSortPDXSwe	Paradox Swedish or Finnish
dbSortPolish	Polish
dbSortSlovenian	Slovenian
dbSortSpanish	Spanish
dbSortSwedFin	Swedish or Finnish
dbSortThai	Thai
dbSortTurkish	Turkish
dbSortUndefined	Undefined or unknown

Remarks The availability of the CollatingOrder property depends on the object that contains the Fields collection, as shown in the following table.

If the Fields collection belongs to an	Then CollatingOrder is

Index object	Not supported
QueryDef object	Read-only
Recordset object	Read-only
Relation object	Not supported
TableDef object	Read-only

The CollatingOrder property setting corresponds to the locale argument of the CreateDatabase method when the database was created or the CompactDatabase method when the database was most recently compacted.

Check the CollatingOrder property setting of a Database or Field object to determine the string comparison method for the database or field. You can set the CollatingOrder property of a new, unappended Field object if you want the setting of the Field object to differ from that of the Database object that contains it.

The CollatingOrder and Attributes property settings of a Field object in a Fields collection of an Index object together determine the sequence and direction of the sort order in an index. However, you can't set a collating order for an individual index — you can only set it for an entire table.

See Also Attributes property.

Example

This example displays the CollatingOrder property for the Northwind database and for individual fields in a table.

Sub CollatingOrderX()

    Dim dbsNorthwind As Database
    Dim fldLoop As Field

    Set dbsNorthwind = OpenDatabase("Northwind.mdb")
    With dbsNorthwind
        ' Show collating order of Northwind database.
        Debug.Print "Collating order of " & .Name & " = " & _
            .CollatingOrder

        ' Show collating order of a TableDef object's fields.
        Debug.Print "Collating order of fields in " & _
            .TableDefs(0).Name & " table:"
        For Each fldLoop In .TableDefs(0).Fields
            Debug.Print "    " & fldLoop.Name & " = " & _
                fldLoop.CollatingOrder
        Next fldLoop

        .Close
    End With

End Sub

Example (Microsoft Access)

The following example checks the CollatingOrder property for the current database:

Sub SetSortOrder()
    Dim dbs As Database

    ' Return reference to current database.
    Set dbs = CurrentDb
    ' Check CollatingOrder property for database.
    Debug.Print dbs.CollatingOrder
    Set dbs = Nothing
End Sub