Two Filter/Sort questions

[JohnVDB]

I have two questions regarding filtering and sorting.

1) On some of my forms, I do not seem to be allowed to filter the data. This is particularly annoying for one table that has over 3500 records in it. I have some forms that allow filtering when I bring them up in a stand alone mode but when they are opened by another form they won't allow it. Any ideas or ways to guarantee filtering to be turned on?

2) When I want to remove a filter, it also removes the sort. For example, I have a list of people that I have sorted by last name. I might want to filter it to just those whose name begins with "P". After I'm done, I want to go back to the complete list. Right now I have to remove the filter/sort and the re-sort or else the names come out in some odd order. Is there a way to prevent this? Is there an event that is triggered that I could override and do a sort so the user doesn't have to?

 

[SeeThru]

Point 2:

Instead of removing the filter, apply another filter which only sets the sort, but shows all records. ie Sort Ascending, no criteria.

 

[JohnVDB]

SeeThru,

That sorts the filtered set. It doesn't bring back the entire set in a sorted order.

 

[SeeThru]

Are you applying the filter in code?

If you are, you can hard code the fiter to apply:

Forms!contacts.Filter = "Contacts.LastName FROM Contacts ORDER BY Contacts.LastName"
Forms!contacts.FilterOn = True
Forms!contacts.Requery

This replaces any current filter with one that sorts by LastName - whatever was previously set is irrelevant.

Also, I tend to use variables for the filter string, so you can have lots of preset filters availalbe to users. Store the filter strings in a table, and users can make and save thier own for later use.

 

[JohnVDB]

At this point, I'm not coding the filter. This is when the user right clicks in a field and chooses to filter the data. I'll provide some pre-canned filters in code that might save them the trouble which would be nice. Since my users aren't too sophisticated I probably won't give the the ability to write their own.