Susan,
I wrote:
but can't you simply perform a triple-sort instead of double-sort? 
First sort by doc-number, then by title and finally by date?
By rereading your message (desired output, and Bruce's reply), I think I 
understand 
your point. You don't want to sort by doc-number. You want to treat the records 
that 
don't have a title, as if they do have a title, taken from another record with 
the same
doc-number. Is that correct?
What processor are you using? I mean, would it be OK to do a transformation
in two steps? 
Greetings
Anton Triest