The trouble with sorting
Before FileMaker Pro 10, you could work with a sorted list and edit records in that list without the sort order changing. If records in the list were sorted by say company name, and you changed a company name, the records did not change position. This was standard behaviour for sorted record lists in FileMaker Pro 9 and prior versions. The records became 'semi-sorted' as you edited them and eventually 'unsorted'.
This behaviour was changed in FileMaker Pro 10. There is now the standard maintenance of the sort order. When changes to a record are committed, the record may be moved in the list. The edited record is still the current record but it may have been moved off the screen. This can be disconcerting when the record you are editing disappears, and it means you do not have a list of record changes in front of you.
We can fix this problem but only after we have submitted a feature request to FileMaker Inc carefully explaining why it would be better if this 'feature' was an option rather than the default. After that, we put a temporary fix in place and wait.
What we do know is that this behaviour does not apply while a script is running. This was explicitly engineered so that scripted processes that loop through sets of records would behave as expected. See the FileMaker Knowledgebase article 6981 for more information. We can take advantage of this supported behaviour in our solution.
What we would set up is a script that jumps into an indefinite pause in a script. While that pause is in effect, we can edit records and they will not be re-sorted. When finished, the pause can be cancelled. So the minimum script you might need is:
Allow User Abort [ Off ]
Pause/Resume Script [ Indefinitely ]
When the script resumes, it finishes.
There is a video tutorial to go with this article. The video extends the script a little to add some features.
