Progress
Report Builder
Tutorial
Accessing and Ordering Data
For this report you already have access to all the fields you need to display. However, you do want to change the order in which the data appears in the report.
By default, Report Builder displays records in the order in which they are read from the master table in the database. However, you can change the order in which Report Builder presents the data without changing the sort order in the database. For this report, you want to display the data by the customer balance in descending order.
Follow these steps to change the sort order:
- Choose Database
Sort Order or the Sort button. The Sort Order dialog box appears:
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Because you have not specified a sort order, there are no fields listed in the dialog box.
- Choose the New button to specify a new sort field. The Sort Level dialog box appears:
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- Open the drop-down list for the Sort Field.
- Double-click on the Newsport database or select it and press ENTER to display a list of tables from the database that are available for this report:
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Because you have only accessed one table, Customer, it is automatically selected. The list on the right displays all the fields in the Customer table.
- Double-click on the Balance field. Report Builder displays Balance in the Sort Field selection list.
The “x” in the Ascending toggle box indicates that Report Builder sorts the records by the customer balance from smallest to largest. However, you want to sort from largest to smallest.
- Deactivate the Ascending toggle box to change the order to descending, then choose OK. The Sort Order dialog box reappears with the newly defined sort order:
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- Choose OK to return to the report layout.
Preview the report to verify that the sort order has changed. As Figure 3–3 shows, the first record is the company with the highest balance.
Figure 3–3: Report Preview of New Sort Order
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