Time for a quick Access sorting and filtering quiz. These are beginner-level questions, but they cover a few things that trip people up all the time, especially text fields containing numbers, Date/Time sorting, and what happens when you apply more than one filter.
Give yourself a moment to answer each question before looking at the answer. If you need more than three seconds, no worries. The computer will not revoke your bridge access. Probably.
Question 1: True or False: Filtering a table deletes the records that do not match the filter.
Answer: False. A filter only changes which records you can currently see. The records that do not match the filter are still in the table. Access is just hiding them from the datasheet temporarily.
This is an important distinction. Filtering is safe for narrowing down a datasheet so you can focus on one customer, one state, one date range, or whatever group of records you need to work with. It does not delete anything. If you want to remove records permanently, that is a completely different operation, and one you should approach with a little more caution.
Question 2: A field is stored as Short Text and contains these values: 5, 6, 9, and 555. What is its ascending sort order?
Answer: 5, 555, 6, 9.
The key phrase is Short Text. Even though the values look like numbers, Access is treating them as characters. Text sorts character by character, not based on mathematical value. Since 555 starts with the character 5, it comes after 5 but before anything beginning with 6.
This is one of the most common beginner mistakes in Access. If a field is supposed to hold quantities, prices, invoice numbers you need to calculate with, or other truly numeric values, it should generally be a Number field rather than Short Text. Text fields are fine for things that look numeric but are really identifiers, such as ZIP codes, phone numbers, or account codes that may contain leading zeroes.
Question 3: Why does an Access Date/Time field sort correctly from oldest to newest?
Answer: Dates are internally stored as numeric values, with earlier dates being smaller.
Access stores dates and times as numbers behind the scenes. Earlier dates have smaller values, so sorting a Date/Time field from oldest to newest works much like sorting a Number field from smallest to largest.
The date portion represents whole days, and the time portion is stored as a fraction of a day. That is why Access can do useful date math. You can add days, subtract dates to find the number of days between them, and sort appointments chronologically without having to alphabetize month names or manually arrange anything.
For example, January 15 comes before February 2 because its internal date value is smaller, not because Access is looking at the letters in "January." If dates were stored as plain text, sorting could get messy very quickly. Nobody wants April, August, December, February, January. That is not a calendar. That is a cry for help.
Question 4: You filter a customer table for State = New York, then add another filter for City = Buffalo. Which records will be shown?
Answer: Only customers whose State is New York and whose City is Buffalo.
When you apply filters on separate fields, Access combines the conditions. In this case, a record has to meet both requirements: the State must be New York and the City must be Buffalo.
Filtering becomes especially useful when you start narrowing down larger tables. You might filter for active customers, then add a filter for a particular salesperson, and then perhaps limit the records to a certain date range. Each additional filter reduces the visible records to those that match all of the active criteria.
Question 5: After you save a table with a filter applied, what normally happens when you close and reopen that table?
Answer: The filter definition is saved, but it does not automatically reapply.
Access can remember the last filter you used with the table, but normally it opens the table showing all records. The saved filter is still available, and you can turn it back on when needed. If you regularly need the same filtered view, however, a query is often the better long-term solution.
A query gives you a reusable saved view of your data. Instead of repeatedly filtering the table for customers in Buffalo, New York, for example, you can create a query that always shows those records. Tables are where the data lives. Queries are where you ask useful questions about it.
How did you do? If you got all five, congratulations, you have successfully sorted the crew and filtered the anomalies. If you missed a few, that is exactly why these quizzes exist. Sorting and filtering are fundamental Access skills, and getting comfortable with them will make working with tables much easier.
You can watch the embedded video for the quiz questions and answers, and check out Access Beginner Level 1, Lesson 8 for more practice with sorting and filtering.
Live long and prosper,
RR
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