Access 2003 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Chapter 5. Sorting and Filtering

• Sorting Database Records

• Finding Data with Filters

WHEN YOUR ACCESS DATABASE contains just a small number of records, it’s a breeze to go in, look up information, and find what you need. Once that database swells to a few hundred or a few thousand records, you’ve got a different situation on your hands. For instance, you may need to put the records in order so you can scan them more easily, or quickly locate everyone who lives in Chicago and whose account balance is more than 30 days past due.

In this chapter, you’ll see how you can use tools like sorting and filtering to view your records and the information they contain. You’ll also learn how to use sorting when you want to put all your records in order, like alphabetical order, and use filtering, alone or in combination with sorting, to pull out only the records that meet a particular condition.

Sorting Database Records

In the days before computers, the word sorting implied drudgery like putting a huge pile of index cards in alphabetical order. Access can do such tasks much faster than you can by hand (and without spilling coffee on a single card), so you can save your organization skills for planning your database.

Before you do anything more than enter the first few records into the database, Access performs an automatic sort based on the primary key field. Look at any of the databases you’ve worked with so far, and you’ll see that the records are automatically sorted so they’re in ascending order ...