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Sort property (ADO)

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Applies to: Access 2013, Office 2013

Indicates one or more field names on which the Recordset is sorted, and whether each field is sorted in ascending or descending order.

Settings and return values

Sets or returns a String value that indicates the field names in the Recordset on which to sort. Each name is separated by a comma, and is optionally followed by a blank and the keyword, ASC, which sorts the field in ascending order, or DESC, which sorts the field in descending order. By default, if no keyword is specified, the field is sorted in ascending order.

Remarks

This property requires the CursorLocation property to be set to adUseClient. A temporary index will be created for each field specified in the Sort property if an index does not already exist.

The sort operation is efficient because data is not physically rearranged, but is simply accessed in the order specified by the index.

Setting the Sort property to an empty string will reset the rows to their original order and delete temporary indexes. Existing indexes will not be deleted.

Suppose a Recordset contains three fields named firstName, middleInitial, and lastName. Set the Sort property to the string, "lastName DESC, firstName ASC", which will order the Recordset by last name in descending order, then by first name in ascending order. The middle initial is ignored.

No field can be named "ASC" or "DESC" because those names conflict with the keywords ASC and DESC. Give a field with a conflicting name an alias by using the AS keyword in the query that returns the Recordset.