Portal Sort A-Z, then AA-Z, then AAA-ZZZ, etc...

[Andrew6000]

Hi all. I hope the subject line is pretty clear. Basically i have a portal sorted by a record "block ID" each block has its own ID starting with A going to Z, after Z it wraps around to AA, BB, CC. In my portal, i would like it to sort all of the A-Z first, then after the last single letter, go the double letters. There are cases where we may have a few blocks of 'random' letters. ex: T, I, O, BB

In this case i would like the portal to list I, O, T, BB.

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

[comment]

You can make a calc field for sorting:

 

Right ( "00000" & BlockID ; 5 )

 

Note:

1. Set result to Text.

2. Those are 5 zeroes in the calc, NOT upper "o" characters.

3. This is assuming that your ID's length does not exceed 5 characters; you can adjust the numbers to your situation.

 

 

Out of pure curiosity:

1. How do you generate BlockID?

2. Shouldn't the sequence be A...Z, AA...AZ, BA...BZ .... ZA...ZZ, AAA, AAB... ?

[Andrew6000]

Tell me about it!

 

The blocks are labeled by the main hospital. We are a research lab in the hospital. So I am stuck using their completely illogical system.

 

 

Question: after I make this field, how do I tell the portal to sort by it? …it’s not a value list?

 

Thank you so so much!

[aaa]

I suggest you to create calculation field

Calc=length(Blok_Id)&"_"&Blok_Id then sort by this field.

[comment]

Either:

Double-click the portal in Layout mode and click 'Sort portal records';

Or:

Define the relationship itself as sorted by this field.

[Andrew6000]

Thanks again!