Section numbering on report (1,1.1,1.2 etc)

[soysauce]

Hi,

I've created a report that lists a set of questions each with its associated number. The numbering is stored as text and is in the following format:

1 questionblahblah
1.1 questionblahblah
1.2 questionblahblah
1.3 questionblahblah
2 questionblahblah
2.1 questionblahblah
2.2 questionblahblah


and so on and so forth...

however, i want to sort the report on these numbers but i cant get it to work. It wants to put numbers like 1.16 above 1.2 for example (which is logical, as 1.16 is less than 1.2). However i want section 1 to contain its own numbers, then move on to section 2 then its numbers and so on.

To clarify; what i'm getting is this:

1.10
1.11
1.12
1.13
1.14
1.15
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
etc

...but what i want is this:

1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
1.9
1.10
1.11
1.12
etc


Any ideas?

Cheers,

Nick

 

[PaulO]

Your report is sorting alphanumerically and you have presumably store these 'values' in text fields? So you'll need to either:-

1. Renumber your points in full decimal format i.e. 1.1 becomes 1.01; 1.2 becomes 1.02; etc
2. Create an additional table storing old (original) and new (decimal) values (e.g. 1.1; 1.01 etc) and link this table to your query using the 'new' field as your sort key
3. Change the field storing the numbering from Text to a Number