OrderBy Property

  • Article

Sorts rows in the resulting dataset of a query in ascending or descending order by a column or columns.

Applies to

Query objects

Property Value

Column=Ascending|Descending

  • Column is the name of the query column as specified by its Name Property.

  • Ascending sorts the column from lowest value to the highest value (A to Z, 0 to 9).

  • Descending sorts the column from highest value to the lowest value (Z to A, 9 to 0).

Note

Separate multiple columns with a comma.

Remarks

To access the OrderBy property, in Query Designer, select the first blank line, and then, on the View menu, choose Properties.

To modify the OrderBy property, you can choose the AssistEdit button next to the property. In the Order By window, you add a column and set its direction to ascending or descending. You can sort on multiple columns by adding additional columns to the Order By window. The query will sort the results by the first column in the Order By window, then the second column, and so on.

You can also type values directly in the Value column of the OrderBy property in the Properties window. To sort on multiple columns, separate each column with a comma.

Important

You can specify up to 7 fields for the OrderBy property.

Note

You cannot sort on the same column more than once.

The OrderBy property corresponds to the Order By clause in SQL select statements.

Example

This following table shows the results of a query that retrieves the quantity of items in every open sales order for each customer.

Customer Quantity
The Cannon Group 50
New Concepts 15
New Concepts 30
Selangerian Ltd. 20
Selangerian Ltd. 60

To sort the Customer column in ascending order and the Quantity column to descending order, you set the OrderBy property to Name=Ascending,Quantity=Descending. The following table shows the results of the query after sorting.

Customer Quantity
New Concepts 30
New Concepts 15
Selangerian Ltd. 60
Selangerian Ltd. 20
The Cannon Group 50

The following is the Order By clause in SQL that corresponds to the OrderBy property in this example.

OrderBy Name,Quantity