Question

Query:

SELECT StartDate, EndDate, RIGHT(Sector, 1 )
FROM Table1
ORDER BY Right(Sector, 1), StartDate

By looking at this, the query should order everything by sector, followed by the start date. This query has worked for quiet awhile until yesterday where it did not order it properly, for some reason, Sector 2 came before Sector 1.

The data type for Sector is of type int, not null. After inserting a TRIM function into Sector it seems to work fine afterwards.

New Query:

SELECT StartDate, EndDate, RIGHT(Sector, 1 )
FROM Table1
ORDER BY Right(TRIM(Sector), 1), StartDate

Which I found really weird since it’s suppose to only pick out one character, so why is there leading spaces?

Is there an issue with using RIGHT function on a int before converting the type? Or is it something else?

Thanks for the help everyone!

-Edit- The RIGHT function should return either 1,2,3 or 4 however when ordering it, 2 comes before 1.

To clarify, the column Sector contains an int value, we can determine it’s location by obtaining the last digit (Which is why the previous coder did)

Answer 1

MS Access 2003 has a curious little feature (I can’t speak for the other versions):

1. Make a simple query. Sort by Column A Ascending. Save the query.
2. Run the query. When you see the output, sort by Column A Descending using the toolbar option (see pic below). Save & close.
3. Run the query again. Your new sort will have overridden the sort that you saved in the query.

I think you or someone else probably just opened the query out of curiosity, sorted by Sector Descending, and when prompted to save Design Changes, you chose Yes (even though technically you didn’t make any). The easiest way I found to restore the original sort is to edit the query and save it.