Question

I have a varchar column that I have datetime values and now string values. I need to order by the datetime value and list all the string values at the bottom. I have the following for the datetime:

ORDER BY CAST(q2.[Due Date] AS DATETIME) 

But my results have the value “On Hold” throughout my results. I need the “On Hold” to be on the bottom of the list.

Answer 1

If the only non-date value is ‘On Hold’, then this should work in most SQL engines:

order by (case when q2.[Due Date] = 'On Hold' then 0 else 1 end) desc,
         (case when q2.[Due Date] <> 'On Hold' then cast(q2.[Due Date] as datetime) end)

I would recommend, though, that if you are storing dates as strings, then use the format ‘YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS’. This will allow you to sort them without having to do a conversion.

If they are in this format, you could use something like:

order by (case when left([Due Date], 1) between '0' and '9' then 0 else 1 end),
         [Due Date]

(Just ordering by [Due Date] would work in most cases, since numbers sort before letters. However, an arbitrary string could start with other non-alpha characters.)