The report templates found in the "Bill of Materials (Quantified)" category will result in reports sorted by part number regardless of the sorting applied on the Run Reports dialog by clicking the Sorting button. This is a limitation of the interface related to the grouping applied to the data, but it does not mean that quantified bill of materials reports cannot be generated with the data sorted by fields other than part number.
A "Balloon BOM_Qty" template found in the CUSTOM category on Run Reports could be used, as these templates do not use grouping and therefore do not have the limitation on sorting with the interface. However, a disadvantage of using these templates is that Options are not available for these templates.
This document describes how to modify a "Bill of Materials (Quantified)" report template so that it sorts by the desired fields.
Refer to the animation below when following this procedure.
Open a page in a project that makes a good test for the desired sorting.
Open Report Template Designer.
Select File > Open and open the report template to be modified or used as the basis for a new template, such as "BOM_Qty - Letter".
In the Designer view, find the Group Header band and click it.
Click the > arrow that then appears on the band. This should reveal a GroupHeaderBand Tasks ppop-up
On the GroupHeaderBand Tasks pop-up click the [...] button next to the "GroupFields" field.
On the resulting GroupField Collection Editor dialog, click the Add button. An additional GroupField item should appear in the left pane.
With the new GroupField item highlighted, select the field to sort by in the FieldName field in the right pane. For example, "Manufacturer".
Repeat step 7 to add any other fields to sort by.
Use the up and down arrow buttons or arrange the GroupField items in the desired order. For example, to sort by Manufacturer and then partnumber, the GroupField item for "Manufacturer should appear above the GroupField item for partnumber in the left pane.
Use the Remove button to remove unwanted GroupField items. For example, to sort only by "Manufacturer", the GroupField item for "partnumber" should be removed.
Click OK to close the GroupField Collection Editor dialog.
Preview the report by selecting the Preview tab.
If the results are acceptable, use File > Save to save the template or File > Save As to save it as a new template.
Close the Report Template Designer.
If different sorting is required for different clients or different types of projects, use "Save As" to save the template to different names with different sorting applied.