Field.OrdinalPosition property (DAO)

Applies to: Access 2013, Office 2013

Sets or returns the relative position of a Field object within a Fields collection. .

Syntax

expression .OrdinalPosition

expression A variable that represents a Field object.

Remarks

For an object not yet appended to the Fields collection, this property is read/write.

The default is 0.

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

If the Fields collection belongs to a	Then OrdinalPosition is
Index object	Not supported
QueryDef object	Read-only
Recordset object	Read-only
Relation object	Not supported
TableDef object	Read/write

Generally, the ordinal position of an object that you append to a collection depends on the order in which you append the object. The first appended object is in the first position (0), the second appended object is in the second position (1), and so on. The last appended object is in ordinal position count – 1, where count is the number of objects in the collection as specified by the Count property setting.

You can use the OrdinalPosition property to specify an ordinal position for new Field objects that differs from the order in which you append those objects to a collection. This enables you to specify a field order for your tables, queries, and recordsets when you use them in an application. For example, the order in which fields are returned in a SELECT * query is determined by the current OrdinalPosition property values.

You can permanently reset the order in which fields are returned in recordsets by setting the OrdinalPosition property to any positive integer.

Two or more Field objects in the same collection can have the same OrdinalPosition property value, in which case they will be ordered alphabetically. For example, if you have a field named Age set to 4 and you set a second field named Weight to 4, Weight is returned after Age.

You can specify a number that is greater than the number of fields minus 1. The field will be returned in an order relative to the largest number. For example, if you set a field's OrdinalPosition property to 20 (and there are only 5 fields) and you've set the OrdinalPosition property for two other fields to 10 and 30, respectively, the field set to 20 is returned between the fields set to 10 and 30.

Note

Even if the Fields collection of a TableDef has not been refreshed, the field order in a Recordset opened from the TableDef will reflect the OrdinalPosition data of the TableDef object. A table-type Recordset will have the same OrdinalPosition data as the underlying table, but any other type of Recordset will have new OrdinalPosition data (starting with 0) that follow the order determined by the OrdinalPosition data of the TableDef.

Example

This example changes the OrdinalPosition property values in the Employees TableDef in order to control the Field order in a resulting Recordset. By setting the OrdinalPosition of all the Fields to 1, any resulting Recordset will order the Fields alphabetically. Note that the OrdinalPosition values in the Recordset don't match the values in the TableDef, but simply reflect the end result of the TableDef changes.

    Sub OrdinalPositionX() 
     
     Dim dbsNorthwind As Database 
     Dim tdfEmployees As TableDef 
     Dim aintPosition() As Integer 
     Dim astrFieldName() As String 
     Dim intTemp As Integer 
     Dim fldTemp As Field 
     Dim rstEmployees As Recordset 
     
     Set dbsNorthwind = OpenDatabase("Northwind.mdb") 
     Set tdfEmployees = dbsNorthwind.TableDefs("Employees") 
     
     With tdfEmployees 
     ' Display and store original OrdinalPosition data. 
     Debug.Print _ 
     "Original OrdinalPosition data in TableDef." 
     ReDim aintPosition(0 To .Fields.Count - 1) As Integer 
     ReDim astrFieldName(0 To .Fields.Count - 1) As String 
     For intTemp = 0 To .Fields.Count - 1 
     aintPosition(intTemp) = _ 
     .Fields(intTemp).OrdinalPosition 
     astrFieldName(intTemp) = .Fields(intTemp).Name 
     Debug.Print , aintPosition(intTemp), _ 
     astrFieldName(intTemp) 
     Next intTemp 
     
     ' Change OrdinalPosition data. 
     For Each fldTemp In .Fields 
     fldTemp.OrdinalPosition = 1 
     Next fldTemp 
     
     ' Open new Recordset object to show how the 
     ' OrdinalPosition data has affected the record order. 
     Debug.Print _ 
     "OrdinalPosition data from resulting Recordset." 
     Set rstEmployees = dbsNorthwind.OpenRecordset( _ 
     "SELECT * FROM Employees") 
     For Each fldTemp In rstEmployees.Fields 
     Debug.Print , fldTemp.OrdinalPosition, fldTemp.Name 
     Next fldTemp 
     rstEmployees.Close 
     
     ' Restore original OrdinalPosition data because this is 
     ' a demonstration. 
     For intTemp = 0 To .Fields.Count - 1 
     .Fields(astrFieldName(intTemp)).OrdinalPosition = _ 
     aintPosition(intTemp) 
     Next intTemp 
     
     End With 
     
     dbsNorthwind.Close 
     
    End Sub