Access 2010 - report with subreport - dynamically change sort order with a group

Grouping always takes precedence over sorting, so your sort order will sort within the group.

You can set the OrderBy property on the subreport in the main report's open event:

Me.YourReport.nameOfYoursubreportControl.Report.OrderBy = "SomeField"
Me.YourReport.nameOfYoursubreportControl.Report.OrderByOn = True

Note you can also change the Field used by the grouping in the report:

http://allenbrowne.com/ser-33.html

Thank you LSMConsulting.
I tried your suggestion and I get an interesting error.  My main report Open Event has the following code:

Private Sub Report_Open(Cancel As Integer)
    If Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.fraSummaryOption = 2 Then
        Me.srptJobBidSuccess.SourceObject = ""
    Else
        Me.srptJobBidSuccess.SourceObject = "srptJobBidSuccess"
        '    depending on options chosen in form - set up filters in sub report
        
        If Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.fraPrintWorkloadOptions = 1 Then         'ALL
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.LinkChildFields = ""
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.LinkMasterFields = ""
        ElseIf Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.fraPrintWorkloadOptions = 2 Then     'selected group
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.LinkChildFields = "GroupDivision"
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.LinkMasterFields = "GroupDivision"
        ElseIf Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.fraPrintWorkloadOptions = 3 Then     'selected  controller
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.LinkChildFields = "Controller"
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.LinkMasterFields = "Controller"
        End If
'        sub report sort order determined by option on form
         If Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.fraOrderBy.Value = 1 Then                'Job date
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.Report.OrderBy = "GroupDivision, [Date], JobNo,  Controller"
        ElseIf Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.fraOrderBy.Value = 2 Then             'job number
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.Report.OrderBy = "GroupDivision, JobNo, [Date], Controller"
        ElseIf Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.fraOrderBy.Value = 3 Then             'job value
            Me.srptJobBidSuccess.Report.OrderBy = "GroupDivision, JobValue desc, JobNo, [Date], Controller"
        End If
        Me.srptJobBidSuccess.Report.OrderByOn = True
    End If

End Sub

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The user has various options to choose from:

You will see that I don't want the sub report to print if user has selected SUMMARY option.
 Before I added the SORT code this all worked correctly.  But now I get error 2455 "You entered an expression that has an invalid reference to property Form/Report" on the line:

Me.srptJobBidSuccess.Report.OrderBy = "GroupDivision, JobValue desc, JobNo, [Date], Controller"

Select allOpen in new window

In the Immediate window I get same error when I try any of the following:


But this is OK:

What am I doing wrong here?

Further investigation reveals that this may be an unreliable method (at best) to handle the OrderBy in your subreport.

A better solution would be to have the subreport look at an open form (for example the Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions form) to get the sort order. To do that, add a textbox to that form and then use code like this in the Open event of the Subreport:

Me.OrderBy = Forms!frmJobSuccessOptions.txSROrderBy
Me.OrderByOn = True

So assuming i have a textbox on frmJobSuccessoptions named "txSROrderBy", this would work, and would be more reliable.

Your suggestion to try me.orderby=xxx  didn't work.  I got an error.  

I also tried:
1. Allen Browne's idea of setting me.grouplevel(1).controlsource="JobDate" --> error 2191
2. Then tried to set subreport grouplevel in parent report --> error 2455

So, then I tried another idea.  In the subreport I created a sort level under my DIVISION group level an used an expression for the SORT BY field:
as the sort level control source.

This doesn't give an error, but it doesn't sort at all!

I like this last option best of all, but why won't it sort my subreport detail records?

Sorry the cycle of these posts is so slow, but we are in different time zones.  (Australia for me!)

I'll post a sample of how I did this some time ago...

I have put this aside for now, but think I am going to got with the option to (via code) open sub report in design view, change sort order and filter, save, and then open properly via parent report.