For example, take the following list of book titles:
Aztec Indians
The Ant People
Beast Man
The Baseball Club
An Attempt At Fun
Apple Valley
If you were to sort this list by using the custom function described in this article in a query, you would receive the following list:
The Ant People
Apple Valley
An Attempt At Fun
Aztec Indians
The Baseball Club
Beast Man
Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements.
To have book titles returned without the leading article, create the
following function:
Option Explicit
Function GetTitle(Titles) As String
Dim sp As Integer
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: No
Field: [Titles]
Show: Yes
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 first
Show check box is cleared so that the query result shows the full title, including the leading articles.