Custom Sorted Value lists no longer work.....

[Matt Klein]

Hi All -

 

Up until FMPro12v3,  I used a little trick in order to create a custom sort order in value lists that were derived from field values...  

 

I would define two fields in the table in which the field values lived....one for entering a number(Position) and one calculation field(SortBy) that stores a quantity of space characters equal to the number entered in the Position field. So,  if the number 5 was entered in the Position field,  5 spaces were in the SortBy field.

 

I would then define my value list to use values from a field,  select the actual field that I wanted to display and then select "Also display values from second field" and select the SortBy field as the second field to show.  The last step would be to select "Sort values using: Second field".

 

This worked like a charm and allowed us to give our users the ability to create their own custom sort order for records they created without the users seeing the contents of the second/sort field.

 

I just noticed that it wasn't working anymore.  I did some poking around and found a FileMaker KB article that states that they identified the effect of leading spaces on sort orders as a problem/bug and "fixed" it in FMPro12v3.    Their "fix" broke functionality I've had in place since FileMaker 8.

 

Does anyone have any other ideas or techniques they can/will share for accomplishing the custom sorting of values in a value list that derives itself from values in fields without showing the second field?   Also,  I would rather stay away from writing a script that sorts, exports, deletes all records, and then imports back.

 

 

[jbante]

You can do the same thing now with non-breaking spaces ("byte order marks") instead of regular spaces. Soliant's Marcelo Piñeyro wrote a blog post describing how to do it, and the Virtual Value List module I wrote uses it.

[Matt Klein]

Thank you very much, jbante!    That solved my problem.   I truly appreciate it.