When you sort ascending on a field, blanks go to the top of the list. You can get around this by sorting on a value list. Non-value list members, including blanks, sort to the bottom.

In FM6, this also held true for sorting portals. But in FM7, whether you sort on a relationship, or sort the portal directly, blanks go to the top of the portal.

Anyone else been bitten by this? It bites.

My workaround is to use a calculated field Case( SortField, SortField, 999 ) /* I hate this */

In FM7, whether you sort a portal by a value list using its relationship, or sort the portal directly, blanks go to the top of the portal. In FM6, blanks went to the bottom when the relationship was sorted by value list. Is anyone else bothered by this? Would anyone care to verify or comment on this? Is this old news?

I'm not seeing it. Here's a sample file that I think is setup like your describing, one portal is sorted itself, the other uses a sorted relationship.

There are bugs with using valuelists from other files, if that's the problem, I think you can make a copy of the valuelist in the file that uses it.

Thanks. Apparently the problem is indeed with external files. See attached for example. The internal table sorts correctly, but the external doesn't. Seems like a genuine bug.

I already reported it to FMI once, a few months ago:

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/showflat.php?Number=110943