In the previous chapters, the purpose of the Print and Sub Order columns was described. Briefly, if your data can be grouped into tables of related products, such as different sizes or colors of the same item, the Print and Sub Order numbers on the left side of the Datasheet are used to create these Groups. If your data does not contain these Product Groups, then the numbers simply define the Printing Order.

Sorting

The sorting function in the datasheet is similar to the sorting function in Excel. It can be accessed via the Sort/Group button on the sidebar.

On the window that pops up, you can select up to three columns to sort by, and choose either Ascending or Descending order for each. You will want to choose columns containing data that is common to all related rows.

In the first Sort field selection, there is an option for Numerical sorting. By default, all fields are sorted as text, even if they contain numbers. This means that if you had the following sequence of numbers: (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21), they would be sorted this way: (1, 13, 2, 21, 3, 5, 8) because alphabetically, 13 comes before 2 and 21 comes before 3. With the numerical option, they would be sorted as numbers, and thus would be sorted as (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21).

Clicking the Sort Only button will sort the datasheet by the specified settings.

Grouping

The grouping function uses the same selections as the Sorting function.

This time, we want to Group the data into related products. This requires that there is some text that is common to all rows that will be in the same group. Grouped products will be given the same Print Order number, and will have different Sub Order numbers. This allows grouped products to be used to create Detail Tables, which give information of multiple variations of one product in a single Display Unit.

Choose the column in the datasheet that you want to group by, and then click the Group Only button.

The group function only groups data that both share the same data in the specified cell, and are directly above or below one another on the datasheet. Thus, in most cases you will want to both Sort and Group your data at the same time.

For example, in this data, the two entires with Classic-1 are not adjacent. Thus, if you tried to group this data, they would not be grouped together.

Now the previous data has been sorted. The two entries with Classic-1 are adjacent, so they will be grouped together by the grouping function.

If you need to both Sort and Group your data, define both the sorting and grouping parameters and click the Sort and Group button. The Sort operation is performed first, so your data will be grouped by its position after the sort.

Renumbering

When the position of the data in your datasheet has changed, whether it is via the Sort function or manual reordering, the Print Order number remain unchanged. The Renumber function, found in the Sort/Group window, will recreate the Print Order column so that the numbers follow the current order of products in the datasheet.