Search/Sort Portal Records

Is it possible to search through and/or sort records found in a portal?

I have a portal that displays fifty lines of info... the way i have it setup right now is that, on each line, i have placed two fields that are read-in from another file called BillableX and TestsPerformedX, respectively. In the file that these fields are read-in from, I have fifty value-list-fields ("yes" or "no") that tell the user whether or not a certain test has been completed and if it is billable (these fields go down the page vertically); each field is numbered, i.e. Billable1, Billable2, ... Billable40. Adjacent to each value-list-field, are fields that tell what test was performed; these fields go down the page vertically as well and are numbered TestsPerformed1, TestsPerformed2, ... ,TestsPerformed40.

So, all this info goes into a portal in another file. What I want is to be able to, say, go into find mode, type in one of the BillableX fields, run the search, and then have only the fields with the value "YES" show up in the portal as well as the adjacent/related TestsPerformedX info next to it.

It doesn't quite work when I try it... I think my main problem might be that FileMaker has no way of knowing which BillableX field is "attached" to which "TestsPerformedX" field. Or maybe portals can't do this anyway? You think I should post this same question into the "Relationships" section of posts?... yeah, I probably should.

Any help, comments, suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards,

Lutfi