moving rows in reports (without using Sort)

Elliot Liebson

Is it possible to move rows around in a report without using the Sort function?  I have a report that pulls from 3 sheets, and I want to change the order of the rows from each sheet (not individual rows if that helps).  Sorting only changes the order numerically or alphabetically, which I don't want to do.  Any ideas?

Jim Hook

I have a report that scans 14 employee timesheets to gather data entered. The entries come in the order they were entered into in the Report Builder Where? box. It looks like the report scans the sheets of interest in the order displayed there and if you add another sheet to the Where? box, it goes at the bottom. So, in the report builder simply add sheets to the Where? box in the order you want them displayed in the report. Hopefully that will work.

Elliot Liebson

No go; I tried adding sheets in order all at once, and one at a time (closing the 'Where' box each time), and none of it worked

Jim Hook

Are you sorting the entries in the report? That might fix the problem. I forgot to check the report I used when responding the first time and I am sorting by employee name which is the same way I selected which sheets to report on and thought that was determining the display order. It turns out the display order is done by sorting on the builder. If that's not working for you I don't know how to fix it.

Elliot Liebson

Update: I found a workaround; it's a little klunky, but it works.  I created a column in each sheet titled 'sorting priority order', with a drop down list 1-8;  the rows I need from each sheet are given a sheet's priority number, and I sort that column in the report in descending order.  A bit slow, and I'll have to change it each time I run the report (the sorting priority will change periodically), but it works.  

Elliot Liebson

Can you explain in a little more detail?  I'm not quite following your process, and it sounds like it may be a simpler fix than what I did.

Jim Hook

I think you have a reasonable solution already and I have used dedicated columns in the past to trigger the report to include rows with the right values just like you are doing. What I was referring to was simply using the sort function in the Report Builder to display rows in a particular sequence. In my case it might be the project number or name (it has to be in each row of the source sheets) and in another case it might be on the person's name for that row. In some cases I've added a date column where I enter a particular date that will exclude that row from the report using the When? section of the Report Builder.

Elliot Liebson

Ok; i get it now, and thanks for responding.  The dropdown column combined with a separate checkbox column is actually pretty handy for sorting reports the way I want (after the initial set up of course)