The MRP Collection Manager User’s Guide
Sorting the Collection
When the List view is displayed in the collection viewer window, the records are ordered according to the current sort criteria. You can change the sort order in one of two ways:
- Double-click on the field name that is at the top of a column in the List display. The selected column will become the primary sort key. (If any other columns were previously being used as sort keys, they will become secondary keys.) Initially a column-header that you double-click on will cause the selected field to be the primary sort key in ascending order. If you double-click on the column-header for the field that is already the primary sort key, the direction of sorting for that field (ascending vs. descending) will be reversed.
- Select Sort Order from the Options menu. (This choice is only available with the List view; it is not available with the Item Details view.) The following dialog box will be displayed (with different field names in the lists, of course, depending upon what fields are defined in your collection):
The dialog shows the current sort keys at the right and the potential sort keys at the left. Move fields from one list to the other by selecting them from the lists and then clicking on the appropriate buttons located between the two lists. Change the sort key order, or the choice of ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC), by selecting one or more items in the right-hand list and using buttons at the right.
Notes on sorting:
- Sorting is numeric for currency, dimension and number fields (i.e. 100, 123, 1000 are sorted numerically, whereas these values sorted as texts would be 100, 1000, 123). Sorting is chronological for date fields. The program tries as best it can to interpret values in numeric fields as numbers and values in date fields as dates.
- The “ID #” field, though defined as a short-text field, is examined to see if all its values are numeric. If so, sorting for “ID #” is done numerically.
- The changes you make to the sort order will be saved with your collection. The next time you open the collection, even if you exited the program and re-started it, the last-used sort order will be remembered.
- The criteria used for the current sort order are displayed at the bottom of the collection viewer window when in List mode.
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