How do you change the sort order for a conditional drop-down?

Interesting question.  I seem to be fighting this same issue.  You should be able to specify a report to use for the drop down and hence be able to specify the sort.  But on a Conditional drop down it seems to want to sort alpha no matter what.  Let us know if you find a solution.  A brute force work-a-round solution might be to make a drop down field to display which has a sort number in front of the selection.

such as

1. Proposed
2. Approved
3. In process
4. Completed

Thanks for the brute force suggestion, Mark! Ideally I'd rather not have numbers in front of the option, but if I can't find any other way, we may just have to go with that. I'm going to play around and see if I can find an alternate solution, but thought I'd pose the question here in case someone else has figured it out :)

I went back to my app which had the problem - in my case the issue was that numbers were not sorting correctly, because $5,000 was sorting after $10,000 as 5 is "higher" than 1.

I created a text field to mirror the numeric field, but I put leading spaces in front the the smaller numbers using a formula.  That way my $5,000 really was (space)$5,000 and hence sorted before $10,000.

So the other method is to have a sort field to display and contrive leading spaces to control the sort - say the top of the list gets 3 leading spaces, and then next gets 2 leading spaces etc.

The actual drop down list seems to trim off the spaces for display purposes.  So, its not great to need to use this work-a-round, but at least there is a way.

I will submit a ticket to support see if this is on a big fix list.

You are seriously the king of work-a-rounds :) Thanks so much! Your trick worked perfectly for me. Hopefully the QB folks can fix this so you don't have to use a work-a-round. Seems like it should sort in the order you've specified in the report.

Help is on the way. ... :)

Your original question: Drop down list for a Conditional Drop down fails to respect the sort order on the Report specified in the form....

Our Response: Mark -

I apologize for the delay. This is a known issue:

QBE005371: Reference field using Record Picker Settings when it shouldn't

This has been marked as Assigned to Fix by our engineers and should be fixed in the next release or two. Once this has been resolved, our team will reach out to let you know.

I realize this is an old post, but I have the same question and couldn't find the solution elsewhere.

I'm trying to sort a conditional drop down base on garment sizes.
YXS
YS
YM
YL
YXL
AXXS
AXS
AS
AM
AL
AXL
2XL
3XL
4XL
etc......

Space solution and the numbering solution won't work well in this case.  Has the "fix" ever been implemented??

Mark

I have a numeric filed included in the table that is used for sorting (works well in the reports).  I also have a Size Category (which is the "condition" for the drop down).  Examples of conditions are (Apparel, Footwear, Headwear... etc).

When the user selects the product, the related size category filters the drop down so the correct size ranges appear.  Where I'm losing it is with the sorting in the CDD.  It seams to ignore the sorting rules on the report.

Record ID | Size | Size Sort | Size Category

Would a work-around be to create a different table for each size category?  Then it would make more sense to have the picker show the Record ID# and then list them in size order in the table.  However, I don't know if it would be possible to change the source for the CDD based on a field selection (product) which has a the related Size Category.

Thanks for any suggestions.
Mark

Did you try my suggestion above?  or was that no an acceptable solution.

In your suggestion, 1st selection (sort order), would be numbers like 42, 43, 43, 43, 44, ... they wouldn't start with single digit numbers 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.  I think this would be confusing to the users.

This is why I though perhaps a different table for each size category, but then comes the possible issue of changing the source for the CDD based on a field selection. (so each size category could start with 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5).

One would think a CDD would be sort-able based on a reference field (like sort order), even though that field is not displayed in the picker.

Thanks
Mark

I see. yes we are just trying to make the best of a bad situation.  You can put in a support ticket quoting that bug number and ask for a timing update./  maybe more tickets against that bug will .get it fixed faster.  They will also automatically notify you when the bug is fixed if you register with them that you need it.

I'm not sure what else to suggest.

Maybe having the drop donw read like 

(42) - S
(43) - YXs
(44) - XS


ie would make it more readable if meaningless sort was in brackets.