Most Layer field types are Text field data. This is a line of text without any formatting properties and is helpful to store any kind of data that can be a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.

Sorting Numbers in Text Fields

Text fields sort alphabetically (lexicographically), not numerically. That means a Text field containing the values 1, 2, 3, 11, 20 will sort as:

1, 11, 2, 20, 3

…because alphabetical sorting reads each character left-to-right and treats 1 as coming before 2 regardless of the digits that follow.

👉 For any sequential or numeric data you'll sort — observation numbers, room numbers, drawing numbers, item counts — use a Number field instead. Number fields sort in true numeric order: 1, 2, 3, 11, 20.

If you need to keep the data as text (for example, identifiers that include letters like A-101 or R200B), pad with leading zeros so values sort correctly as text: 01, 02, 03, … 10, 11, 12.