The Sort page in the Reports Explorer and the report wizards lets you choose the order in which records appear in the report. For example, you may wish to have a report sorted by city and within city, chronologically by a certain date field.

This page may not be available for some reports.

The following options are available in this page:

• Use same sort next time report is run: if you turn this option on, any sort order specified is used as the default sort order the next time the report is selected. Of course, the sort order can be changed the next time, but this option is handy if you usually use the same sort order each time the report is run.

• Initial sort order: if this report is grouped on one or more fields, these fields are listed as an initial sort order; any fields you sort on in this step are used after the initial sort order. You cannot change the initial sort order without editing the report and changing the grouping.

• Available sort fields: a list containing the fields that appear in this report that have not already been selected for sorting.

• Selected sort fields: a list showing the fields the report data is sorted on. Fields in this list may be moved up and down to change the order in which the data is sorted; to do this, click the button in front of the desired field and drag the button up or down in the list.

• Add: clicking this button adds the selected field in the Available list to the Selected list. You can select several fields by holding down the Shift key as you select them; clicking Add adds all selected fields to the Selected list. You can also add the field by double-clicking it in the Available list, selecting it and pressing Enter, or dragging the field from the Available list to the Selected list. The field is removed from the Available list.

• Remove: clicking this button removes the selected field (or fields if you have selected more than one) from the Selected list. You can also remove the field by dragging it from the Selected list to the Available list or double-clicking it. The field is added to the Available list.

• Ascending: clicking this button sorts the selected field from lowest to highest.

• Descending: clicking this button sorts the selected field from highest to lowest.

You can only sort on fields that appear in the report. If you want to sort on a field that doesn't appear in the report, add the field to the report and in the Properties dialog for that field turn off the Display this field in the report setting. This tells Reporting4Act! to not display that field but to still retrieve it from the database.

Sorting on totaled fields in summary reports is given higher priority than grouped fields. This allows you to show, for example, sales by product with the biggest selling items first by using a descending sort on the sales amount field.