Week 2-ElectronicFiling-Sorts

							            INFO 1012   ELECTRONIC FILING AND CALCULATING
                                  Week 2
                    ELECTRONIC FILING USING ACCESS 2003
                                 SORTING

Sorting is a way of organizing your database in order to make it more efficient, or make
the information it contains more useable to you and your company. We are only working
with 10 records, but most companies have hundreds or even thousands of records.
Therefore, you can see the advantage of being able to work with the records in an
electronic filing program, instead of a manual one. Everything is accomplished much
quicker. The program, however, is only as accurate as the information that is entered into
the records. So, accurate entry of the information is CRITICAL to the effectiveness and
usefulness of the database. Typing errors can cost the company money because incorrect
data is produced when sorting and querying. We will practice querying in Module 3.

Sorting is easy to do with electronic filing. First, you use your mouse to left click on the
column head name of the column you are interested in sorting. That action should
highlight the whole column.

Then you decide if you want the information in that column in ascending order (A-Z, or
with numbers 1-10) or descending order (Z-A, or with numbers 10-1). You just click on
the proper button in the toolbar, while the column is highlighted, and it is automatically
placed in the order you chose.

Practice sorting by issuing the commands for the following sorts. Be sure and notice
what you see after the sort command is issued.

      Sort the Street Name column in ascending order. You should notice that the two
       addresses on Monterey Drive are in numerical order, with the smallest number
       street address being listed first.

      Sort the City column in ascending order. You should notice that the two
       addresses on Monterey Drive are still in numerical order with the smallest number
       being listed first. This is because the city names are the same.

      Sort the Customer Number column in ascending order. You should notice that the
       records are again in numerical order with Customer Number 01 listed first and
       Customer Number 10 listed last.

Try any other sorts you like and see what the results are. When finished experimenting,
sort the table with the Customer Number, Ascending, and close the table. If it asks if you
want to save the changes, click Yes.