14. Using Alt+[Up/Down] to rearrange the order of elements in the AOT.

As part of my series on “Things new X++ Developers Should know”. I have been writing a few basic howtos for new X++ Developers. These are really meant to be simple instructions to get new developers more productive by exposing the little secrets of the AX development that sometimes take years before discovering.

Today is the simple trick of moving elements up and down in list in the AOT using your keyboard. E.G. Re-arranging fields in a grid control or field group. Sometimes the mouse re-arranging produces unexpeded results and is quite frankly much slower.

  • Simply highlight (click on) an element of an object that makes sense to re-order e.g. a column in a form grid.
  • While holding in the “ALT” key use the up and down arrow keys of your keyboard to move the object up and down in the list

Reorder_AOT_Elements

Notes on this functionality:

  • This functionality only works where it actually makes sense i.e. where where order actually matter like on grids and field groups. E.G. Moving your control above “methods” (in the screenshot) will have no effect and will automatically move it back down to directly below “methods” on re-opening the aot element.
  • This functionaly will do nothing on set elements in an Object e.g. “Methods”, “Datasources”, “Designs”, “Parts” etc…
  • If you’re a little OCD like myself and would like to re-arrange the fields (in the fields node) on a table object they will move when using Alt+[Up/down], but the change will not be permenant, even after saving. Field order doesn’t really make much difference in AX, apart from readability in the AOT. So if you want the primary key to be at the top of the list, then you must create it first (I haven’t found a workaround yet).
  • The same applies for ordering of methods in classes. The methods physically move but the change is not permenant
  • As above, even though you are physically able to, reordering the tables in the AOT makes no difference. They will always be revert to being alphabetical after re-opening the AOT.
  • Re-ordering objects in an AX development project does work! The elements will stay in the order that you arrange them.

 

 

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