ACC: Sorting Titles Without Leading Articles (The, An, or A)

ID: Q98665

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Access versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 7.0, 97

SUMMARY

Moderate: Requires basic macro, coding, and interoperability skills.

This article shows you how you can sort titles in Text fields without including the leading articles "the," "an," or "a."

This article assumes that you are familiar with Visual Basic for Applications and with creating Microsoft Access applications using the programming tools provided with Microsoft Access. For more information about Visual Basic for Applications, please refer to your version of the "Building Applications with Microsoft Access" manual.

NOTE: Visual Basic for Applications is called Access Basic in Microsoft Access versions 1.x and 2.0. For more information about Access Basic, please refer to the "Introduction to Programming" manual in Microsoft Access version 1.x or the "Building Applications" manual in Microsoft Access version 2.0

MORE INFORMATION

The following is a list of book titles:

   Aztec Indians
   The Ant People
   Beast Man
   The Baseball Club
   An Attempt At Fun
   Apple Valley

If you sort the above list using a custom function in a query, you receive the following new list:

   The Ant People
   Apple Valley
   An Attempt At Fun
   Aztec Indians
   The Baseball Club
   Beast Man

To have book titles returned without the leading article, create the following function:

Option Explicit

   Function Gettitle (Titles) As String
      sp = InStr(1, Titles, Chr$(32))
      If sp > 0 Then
         Select Case Left(Titles, sp - 1)
            Case "An", "A", "The"    ' add any other articles here!
               Gettitle = Mid(Titles, sp + 1)
            Case Else
               Gettitle = Titles
         End Select
      Else
          Gettitle = Titles
      End If
   End Function

To sort a table on the Titles field, create a query with the following two columns in the query grid:

   Query
   -----
   Field: Sorted List: Gettitle([Titles])
      Sort: Ascending
      Show: Yes
   Field: [Titles]
      Show: No

The first column is a calculated field that extracts the text of the Titles field, but omits the leading article. The results of this calculation are sorted in ascending order. The second Show check box is cleared so that the query result is not displayed.

REFERENCES

For more information about parsing strings, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q115915
   TITLE     : Sample Expressions to Extract Portion of Text String

Additional query words: titles sort strip left

Keywords          : kbprg ExrStrg 
Version           : 1.0 1.1 2.0 7.0 97
Platform          : WINDOWS
Hardware          : x86
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: November 21, 1998