InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by WayneK on 2018/11/05 11:55

I'd appreciate any advice on getting "sort" to work correctly

1) Column sort

I like using this because it's convenient for rapidly switching between different sorts. Unfortunately, i can't get it to persist. The sort order is repeatedly lost and has to be re-applied after hoists, column filters etc. Maybe this is by design but it'd be nice if a column sort would be maintained until a new sort is applied

2) Incorrect alphabetical sort order.

Sort starts with an "A" item, then has several other randomly-chosen items, then has an underscore item (which should be first), then it starts over "A" again and sorts correctly from that point.

I've checked for extra spaces etc but cant figure out why they're mis-sorted.

Here's an example of sorting subitems:

This is the bottom of the sort, The words are sorted correctly through "With...". Then it puts "_Info" and after that it starts a second sort beginning with "A Misplaced Ban".

I could post other examples. I use an underscore (_) for items I want to always sort first. Sometimes they do sort first, sometimes last, and sometimes in the middle.

I re-read the manual and searched threads but was unable to resolved these issues.

Wayne

110pre8

Comments

Hi Wayne,

Which type of sorting are you using ?

Source bar sort
Sort bar

Also, does this help 5. Sorting and Grouping Items ?

If using Sort bar, better to drag the column header to the Sort bar if you want it to persist

(by design, if you simply click on the column header, it is a temporary sort)

Column header > Show HTML codes is helpful to reveal embedded HTML codes (such as bold). They affect Source bar sort..

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Pierre,

Thanks. I'll work through all of your suggestions but the HTML code option has already helped. Even though item text shows nothing in front of the beginning text, HTML code reveals an empty line in the ones that were mis-sorting.

I fixed the mis-sorted items by putting my cursor at the beginning of the text and hitting backspace (even though no blank space was visible and nothing seemed to happen when i hit backspace).

I'll go through other cases to see if this is the resolution for all.

Wayne

So far, the extra line space is the problem but the solution isn't easy.

How do I remove the extra line spaces without having to click on and backspace each one individually?

More importantly, why am I getting these spaces and how do I prevent them in the future?

Here's an example of what I'm seeing. The upper items have the extra line spaces.

Wayne

To clarify what I'm seeing. Somehow a large number of my items have gotten an extra empty line space before the text which causes them to be sorted incorrectly:

Sort is set to manual and sort by item (not item and subitem). I've tried different combinations of settings, including using the sort bar, but nothing made a difference.

This is what an item looks like in normal view (note that no extra space is visible):

When I turn on "Show HTML Codes", I see the empty line space:

When I enter edit mode, the line space disappears:

When I hit backspace to remove the line space, nothing visible happens. I'm now finding

that I have to backspace 20-30 times for each item to remove the empty line space.

I have dozens of items like this, at the least, and maybe many more, so manual removal is going to be time-consuming.

I don't really mind doing it if I can be sure I don't end up with the same situation again .

Wayne

I checked my grid. I have over 1800+ items. I'd guess that 5-10% of them have the extra line space.

These are mostly article titles, often copied from the web rather than typed. It occurred to me that I could be picking up the extra line space when I captured the text online. Unfortunately, I was unable to recreate the problem that way even when I purposely tried to grab extra space around the article titles.

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

This may have been an issue with previous versions, I remember seen it for me too

You can use a form to make batch changes to items

Create a form
Add the Item field
In the right side of the form, enter =mid([item],2)
Save the forms

Now select 1 item (as a test) and apply the form. See if it fixes it. If yes, you can apply the form to all items with this issue

There are other solutions, if this is not good enough...

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

OK, t'll try that. If nothing else, I can copy/paste to a new blank item. There aren't many fields to transfer.

Wayne

Pasting text copied from a HTML page into IQ items is often problematic. Especially when using the 'create new lines' paste option.

I know this was discussed before -- mostly re the problem of unwanted linebreaks randomly appearing in IQ leading to multiple items per sentence -- might not be related but thought I would mention.

Tom,

Yeah, this is the first time I've run into this so I guess I haven't done much copy/pasting from the web. I did come up with a simple solution.

I'd previously had problems copy/pasting text from PDFs because it keeps the original line breaks and the pasted text in InfoQube won't re-flow to fit the item width in the grid. There are websites that will remove these extra spaces but it obviously doubles the work as you have to copy/paste there, then copy/paste again in InfoQube.

There are a number of utilities that will remove these spaces and I settled on using Clipboard Fusion (free). I found that it works for this problem, too, so all I have to do is go back and copy/paste the problematic items in place (ie copy the item, then immediately paste it back in the same spot - in that process, Fusion removes the extra line space).

It should have prevented the problem in the first place but I've found that it stops working when it's been active for a long time, and I have to restart it to get it going again.

Wayne