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Order By with Union’s in MySQL

January 31st, 2008 by Anthony Curreri

I’ve you’re just starting to play with a Union, then you might have gotten the error message:

#1221 – Incorrect usage of UNION and ORDER BY

You might be thinking: Whoa, hang on there! Do you mean MySQL can’t order a Union?! Oh, but it can! First little issue I had was in realizing that you can put parenthesis around the queries. So phrase your query thusly:

“(SELECT …) UNION (SELECT …) ORDER BY …”

Just be sure that your Order By includes only the column name. Table.Column is going to get you another error!

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Posted in Database | 3 Comments »


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3 Responses to “Order By with Union’s in MySQL”

  1. on 30 Jun 2010 at 6:19 am   BobJoe

    Thank you!

  2. on 13 Jul 2010 at 8:22 am   Chris

    Thanks for the tip. Very useful post.

  3. on 11 Aug 2010 at 6:34 am   Jaymze Gazov

    Very clear and accurate description – and – it works !!! Thanks !!!

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