The sort order is going to be determined by how you view your custom report. Right now, its sorting like an ASCII order - are you opening it in a different program? If you bring it out as tab delimited and open it in say, Excel; then sort the date column as a date-formatted field, it will do what you want. If the date column is formatted as text, it will sort differently. I did a test with my database, requesting Surname, FirstName; Marriage Date and Spouse. I then sorted it by Marriage date and printed it to an rtf file. It looks like it printed in correct date order - blanks first, then dates as shown in sample below; sorted by year, then month and date. Is this what you were looking for? CADLE, Bethena Harve 3 Jul 1836 W Henry MCKNIGHT R CUNNINGHAM, A 22 Mar 1838 Mary WILES PYLE, Octavius 22 Aug 1839 Sophronia MOORE COMBS, Alexander W 5 Aug 1840 Nancy Ann DYE DYE, Nancy Ann 5 Aug 1840 Alexander W COMBS COMBS, Catherine Ann 8 Feb 1842 Cortez PYLE PYLE, Cortez 8 Feb 1842 Catherine Ann COMBS CUNNINGHAM, A 20 May 1844 Samantha P CADLE KINCAID, Ann 14 Sep 1845 Patterson R CADLE CADLE, Patterson R 14 Sep 1845 Ann KINCAID MCELVAIN, Andrew 29 Oct 1845 Deborah COMBS COMBS, Deborah 29 Oct 1845 Andrew MCELVAIN HEARN, Allison Bef 1847 Martha CROFFORD CALHOUN, George S 18 Mar 1847 Nancy MOSBARGER MOSBARGER, Nancy 18 Mar 1847 Captain G S CALHOUN MATHEWS, Nathaniel J. 17 Oct 1847 Susannah M. TOLLS TOLLS, Susannah M. 17 Oct 1847 Nathaniel J. MATHEWS FRAKES, Gabriel Wilson 12 Oct 1848 Rebecca MILLER MILLER, Rebecca 12 Oct 1848 Gabriel Wilson FRAKES BLACK, Jane Wilson 30 Dec 1848 Zachariah P CADLE CADLE, Zachariah P 30 Dec 1848 Jane Wilson BLACK Regina Barry * rmbarry1066@earthlink.net * http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rbarry4145/index.htm