Sort Bug? Again.

[Ron Kihara]

I’m still having problems sorting in the second sort field, which almost has one entry that does not sort properly. The first sort field, a date, always sorts properly, the second sort field “text,” almost always has one entry that is not in the proper sort order, and which appears at the top. Refresh and toggling the field type does not fix the problem. I’m using the latest version of Tap Forms, Version 5.2.3 (Build 1727). iMac, late 2009, OS 10.13.1.

[Brendan]

Hi Ron,

It could be because the date values in your First Sort field have different times in them.

You could try temporarily switching your Date field to a Date & Time field and then check to see if any of the times in the values are causing the sorting to be out of whack for what you had intended.

[Ron Kihara]

It’s Date and Time that’s the problem. The majority of fields showed 12 PM, but some of them showed 12 AM. How do you think this is happening? I toggled back and forth between Date and Date and Time a couple of times and it reset everything to AM. The sort is correct now.

[Brendan]

Perhaps some records were created in a different time zone than others?

[Ron Kihara]

I’m indexing a monthly publication, so the records for each issue are entered together in one time zone, usually all within a half hour. This is still occurring regularly, but since toggling the Date (sometimes more than once) takes care of this, I can live with it.

[Jose Monteiro]

Hi Ron,

I had the same problem with time in date fields.
When we enter a date into a date field we are only interested in the date value not in time.
Otherwise we would choose a Date & Time field.
I asked Brendan to set the time to 00:00:00 when entering a date into a date field.
I believe he is working on it and that we will have it on the next release of TF.
Then you and me and anyone with this problem will not need to do the toggling operation.

Jose

[Ron Kihara]

Thanks, that’s good to know. It always makes me nervous to toggle the Date type to get the right sorting, since it seems that I run the risk of losing all of the Date info. It seems that the data for Date, and Date & Time, must be stored in the same location. Toggling from one to the other, just changes what shows and the interface?

-Ron

[Jose Monteiro]

Date and time are stored as a single number in the same location.
To avoid toggling now you could change your Date type to Date & Time type.
Then you will be seeing date and time on the same column.
You will not loose any data because the number stored is the same.
What changes is the way you see that number: as a Date or as a Date and Time.

But to be sure of that, you’d better test it on another form just with one field.
Create a Date field, enter any date, and then change the field type to Date & Time.
You should get the same date and a time.
Before doing that on your work form make a backup of it just in case anything goes wrong.

Then with the column being a Date & Time one, when entering a date clicking on the calendar icon, on the pop-over, with the arrows keys on the box below the clock, set the date to the one you want and tapping the right arrow move to the time and set it to 00:00:00
No need for toggling.

[Jose Monteiro]

Sorry Ron.

I did not understand you were already toggling between Date and Date & Time.

If you could keep you column as Date & Time, when entering a date you could set the time to 00:00:00 at the same time and avoid toggling, while we don’t have this issue solved.

[Jose Monteiro]

Another way I use a lot when I need to have records sorted in a way I can’t get with the fields I have, like text fields, is to have a Number column which I fill with numbers the way I want and have the form sorted by this field.
The numbering need not to be sequential.
Many times I fill these columns with numbers in steps of 10, like 10, 20, 30 and so on.
When I add a new record and want it to be between record 50 and record 60 I can fill it with any number between 51 and 59 and the problem is solved. And there is room for more between records 50 and 60.

And if you feel your column is being full of numbers not with the step you need and would like to renumber your column with another step, with a little help from Numbers spreadsheet it’s quite easy to do that.
If you need any help on that just let me know.

[Brendan]

So it turns out that if you used the date popover, Tap Forms was correctly setting the time portion of the date to the beginning of the day. But if you entered the date value directly into the field, it wasn’t. I’ve just fixed that.

[Ron Kihara]

I’m looking forward to the update. I was entering dates through cut and paste, direct entry, and the popup.

[Ron Kihara]

Jose, thanks for the input!

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