Help with macro controlling Sort By fields

Question

I have a macro where I want to be able to control the which fields are the "Sort By" fields as well as the Order of said fields.(attached)

The fields going into the macro are dynamic so the field names are not known and it could have 1 sort by field, 2 sort by, or more.

Thanks for any help!!

Craig

Sample.yxmc

caltang · Answer

Well, not a macro per se but an analytic app that showcases the selection capability as per your request.

Because you want to see what fields are in your data, you'll need to get it to connect with the file input interface. A macro itself is not able to show you the field values "live" unless you use control containers I believe. Even then it gets complex with interface tools - I've not tried that yet.

But I offer you an alternative approach via analytical apps. It allows you two ways, one to sort ascending/descending on the field names as is. Two is that it allows you to retain x number of fields in their original position from the dataset at the front of the fields, then sort the rest ascending/descending to your liking.

I've left the annotations inside and you can study the interface interactions.

P.S: Yeah I get the fact that you need to sort the FIELD NAMES, but once you pivot your field names for sorting etc via Transpose/Cross Tab or Field Info tools, your field names become your data. Then you can pivot it back and use a neat trick on the Union tool like so:

This configuration follows the order of your 1st input in Union, so your following inputs are forced to follow the field name order.

It's not exactly the macro you wanted, but it solves the need. You can replace the Browse tools with your ETL processes thereafter. Hope this helps.

ForCraig.yxzp

csh8428 · Answer

@aatalai While that macro does work(I already tried it), it doesn't satisfy my requirement of being able to dynamically select which fields "stay" at the beginning.

aatalai · Answer

@csh8428 look at the crew macros

http://www.chaosreignswithin.com/p/macros.html

There is a field sort tool already that might be able to help