Ms Office Tune Up

Sorting and filtering are two indispensable features that Access gives you with Form view. Learning how to use them could hardly be easierin fact, you already learned everything you need to know when you tackled the datasheet in Chapter 3. The creators of Access took great care to ensure that filtering and sorting work the same in forms as they do in the datasheet. You use the same commands, on the same part of the ribbon, to put them into action.

Sorting a Form

As you’ve probably realized by now, forms show your data in raw, unsorted order. So records appear in the order you created them. (The only exception is if you create a form that gets its data from a query, and that query uses sorting.)

Fortunately, sorting’s easy. In fact, you can sort the records that are shown in a form in exactly the same way you sort records in a datasheet. Choose the field you want to use for sorting, right-click it, and then choose one of the sorting options. In a text-based field, you’ll see the sorting choices “Sort A to Z” (for an alphabetical sort) and “Sort Z to A” (for a reverse-alphabetical sort). You can also use the Ascending and Descending buttons on the ribbon’s Home Sort & Filter section.

Filtering a Form

Filtering’s a feature that lets you cut down the total number of records so you see only those that interest you. Filtering can pick out active customers, in-stock products, expensive orders, and other groups of records based on specific criteria.

In a form, you have the following filtering choices:

• Quick filter shows you a list of all the values for a particular field and lets you choose which ones you want to hide. It’s easy to use, but potentially time-consuming. If you want to hide numeric values that fall into a certain range, then you’ll get the job done much faster with the “filter by condition” approach (as described later). To show the list of quick filter values, move to the field you want to filter, and then click Home Sort & Filter Filter. Section 3.2.2 has full details about quick filters.

• Filter by selection applies a filter based on an existing value. First, find the value in one of the records, right-click it, and then choose a filter option. You can right-click a price value of $25, and then choose “Greater Than or Equal to 25″ to hide low-cost items. For more information, see Section 3.2.2.2.

• Filter by condition lets you define the exact criteria you want to use to filter records. You don’t need to base it on an existing value. To add this sort of filter, right-click the field and then look for a submenu with filtering options. This menu item’s named according to the data, so text fields include a Text Filters option, number fields have a Number Filters option, and so on. You can learn more about this type of filter in Section 3.2.3.

• Advanced filters are filters that you design using a window that looks just like the query designer. The advantage of advanced filters is that you can apply filters on more than one field in a single step. To create a set of advanced filters, choose Home Sort & Filter Advanced Filter Options Advanced Filter/Sort.

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