Sort by encrypted field

[gabi]

Hi Brendan,

I have a problem when I sort records by an encrypted text field.

I added a new record to such a form, and all the record’s order got messed up.

This form already has a lot of records and it didn’t happened before.

I tried to resort the record’s order by doing the following steps:

enter the form-> select “customize form”-> select “sort & group settings”-> select the encrypted text field I want to sort by-> only decrypted fields are shown. in my case all of the records were encrypted so no record appeard.

In other encrypted forms, for now, the sorting is fine.

but I checked, and when I try to resort them, I can’t choose an encrypted field to sort by.

Thanks,

Gabi.

[Brendan]

Hello Gabi,

That’s one of the perils of using encrypted fields. They don’t sort properly. That’s because the encrypted value gets all mangled and isn’t the same value as you originally had. At least not without providing the encryption key. Your best bet is to use full database encryption. I would suggest turning off encryption on your fields, then turn on full database encryption. It’s redundant to have field-level and full database encryption.

You turn on full database encryption on the Security Settings screen by tapping “Encrypt Database”.

Thanks!

Brendan

[gabi]

Thanks!!

[Author]

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