Hi Ruth,
I'll need to double check this one, but my first impression is that you're asking the impossible: you are modifying the field that is used to sort items, items in the "document-details" window are tightly bound to the list in the underlying "documents" page, and rightly so. Breaking this connection will create all sorts of other problems and I don't see a way to eliminate your problem while keeping this tight connection.
I can see an easy workaround, though:
- you may create a code called “missing dates”,
- list the items in your review,
- sort them by date,
- select all the items that do not have the date information,
- right click the "missing dates" code and "Assign selected items to this code",
- right click again, and "List items with this code",
- sort this second list (that contains all items that need the date to be manually added) in some other way (not by date).
- "Go" into document details and fix the dates as you were doing before; this time, each time you'll save your changes the order of the items will not change.
I hope this helps,
Sergio