I have created a form which has a field called (Clients), this field looks for the data on another table used for data entry of new clients etc.

My links to the above works fine, what I want to achieve is have the list in A to Z order for ease of use when entering data, i.e. if I have 10 clients initially which I have put in A to Z order, then later add another client beginning with (B) I would want the list to readjust automatically.  Is this easy to do, had a search but not been able to find anything?

Thank you in anticipation

Dear Steve.

As you know we have been working on DE9 for quite some time now and with it being made available to users this month it is hard not to answer this using DE9 rather than 8.5.

This will be quite tricky in 8.5 (not impossible) but in DE9 there are a number of ways to do this but the simplest is simply to use the revamped Multibox/Dropdown control.

It is no secret that this control has not been very good in 7.x and not that much better in 8.x but in DE9 it has really come to its own.

Not only can you use it as you have described but it can now even be built ontop of itself as a self-populating drodown.

As you can see from the image it will both filter away multiple entries of the same data as well as sort the list.

You can also search directly in the multibox and filter the list to include only the hits and it will search from front of word up to 3 letter and switch to freetext search above 3 letters.

Here we have the list in Runtime mode, you see the values are unique and sorted.


I don't have Bombay in the list so I type that in, when I save the form Bombay will be my choice as well as being added to the list for future reference.





In DE9 I also have "triggers" on value change (Action as on button) so if I had the value stored in a different table I could simply add a ExecDQL to update/insert that table  too.

Thank you for your prompt reply it was appreciated, so was the reply.  I shall wait for Dataease 9 and continue when it is released following the advice given.

Steve_C