I am not sure where to put this question.  It has more to do with sorting than finding.

 

I have a list of tasks for my cabinet shop.  These are events that show up on an ad hoc basis that we need to remember to take care of.

The priority for each task may change daily but the task remains on the list until it is complete.

 

I use two fields for this:  TASK DESCRIPTION & PRIORITY.

 

The priorities are basically:  Do this 1st >> Do this 2nd>> Do this 3rd etc

 

The problem I am having is in my sort.

 

I want to see the list to sort with Priority 1 > Priority 2 > Priority 3 tasks at the top and unassigned priority tasks at the bottom.

 

Right now the tasks that have no priority yet assigned show up at the top of the list.

 

Is there some way to exempt tasks without an assigned priority from this sort?

You can assign a flag bit (1/0) to the assigned or unassigned priorities.And you can  set the sort order to Flag bit and then priority number(1st priority,2nd Priority etc, ).In this way the records will be  first sorted in the order of their assignment status  and then according to their priority. 

This is the first time I have heard of the concept of "assigning a flag bit".

Can you elaborate on what this is or how to do it?

 

I can understand the concept of filtering first for tasks that have no assigned priorities but do not understand the actual mechanics of how to "flag" them.                          

Another way to refer to a "flag bit" is a Boolean value (search wikipedia for more info on this), in FileMaker that would be a number field that contains either an empty value, 0, or 1.

 

However; I don't think a Boolean field is appropriate there. I would recommend using an auto-entered value of 0 in your priority field, which will make the default priority for all records 0, which should be synonymous with "unassigned". You would need to modify all current records priority field to be 0, if it is currently blank.

 

Another option is to sort the priority field by a custom value list who's first value is a blank line, then contains all the numbers you ever plan on using as a priority, so it would look like:

1
2
3
4

 

I'm not 100% certain this last idea will work, but I think it should.

Thanks guys!

You've cleared it up for me.