HOW DO I SORT BY DATE AND TIME IN A WORD TABLE?

[ANADJARZADEH]

OK, so here is what the table lookslike: columns are separted by pipe

DATE & TIME|DESCRIPTION|SOURCE

I want to sort by first column (date& time) and users have been instructed to enter date&time entries consistently using the following format: mm/dd/yyyy, hh:mm x.m.

Word's table sorting is giving us the following issues:

does not sort by time even though in sorting options, we specify to sort by date as field 1 and time as field 2. Date is sorted (for the most part), however time entries within a date range do not sort properly. How can I fix?

when rows from other tables are pasted into the current table sorting function does not work for the pasted portion. How can I fix?

How can I make entries labeled as 'UNDATED' go to the bottom of the table when sorting?

Thank You

 

[SkipVought]

Hi,

When you Table > Sort, does it indicate that you have dates in your column? My Word table sorted on Date & Time.

Please post an example via copy 'n' paste, of data that is and is not sorting properly.

My second question is, why are you using Word to enter tabular data? It is not really designed for that. I'd ask a similar question to someone trying to do word processing in Excel. An occasional table in a document, okay. But this seems a bit heavier or am I mistaken?

Skip,

_{Have you heard that the roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was...
Sir Cumference!}

 

[MasterRacker]

I agree with Skip here. Especially as you some fields with an actual date and others with the string "UNDATED". I'm not sure how well Word supports data types in a table to begin with, but with mixed data it almost has to sort every thing as text.

In general terms, tables in Word are formatting purposes, not data storage. One option would be to store your data in a spreadsheet and embed the spreadsheet in a Word document if you need to mix in explanatory text.

_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[SkipVought]

I missed the 'UNDATED' string thing.

Bad, REALLY bad to mix text and numeric data (Date/Time, BTW is NUMERIC and what you see displayed is a DISPLAY FORMAT)

Leave the cell EMPTY rather than with a 'UNDATED' string value.

Skip,

_{Have you heard that the roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was...
Sir Cumference!}

 

[ANADJARZADEH]

See below for an example of some rows. This is the same exact order they appear in after we table>sorted.

The reason we are putting this info into a word table is because the ProLaw software that we use saves excel spreadsheets in an OLE file and only the person who created it can open and save changes.

So, I took master's advice and I recreated the document template with an excel spreadsheet embedded in it . The sorting function in excel worked perfectly. However, now I'm having formatting issues with the embedded spreadsheet.

Is there a way to set properties on it so that when users enter new info the spreadsheet automatically expands, even if it needs to spill onto the next page? Most of our Chronologies are way longer than one page.

How do you make header rows repeat in an embedded table? I know how to do it in Excel, but the same options aren't under the page setup menu in word.

Thanks,
Asal


DATE, TIME DESCRIPTION SOURCE
_________________________________________________
04/05/2005
2:09 p.m. DESCRIPTION 0128989 0020

04/05/2005
4:50 p.m. DESCRIPTION 0128989 0020

04/12/2005
2:53 p.m. DESCRIPTION 01UMB 0021

04/12/2005
1:43 p.m. RECORDED STATEMENT 0128989 0019-0128989

04/12/2005
1:47 p.m. DESCRIPTOIN 0128989 0148-0128989

 

[MasterRacker]

I don't know of a way to allow an embedded object to automatically resize.

Unfortunately I don't know anything about ProLaw to try and suggest a different export method either. Does it use a known 3rd party database like SQL Server or Oracle rather than it's own proprietary one? If so, maybe you could connect directly to the database with a reporting tool like Crystal Reports.

_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]