ORA-01785: ORDER BY item must be the number of a SELECT-list expression

I got ” ORA-01785: ORDER BY item must be the number of a SELECT-list expression ”  error in Oracle database.

ORA-01785: ORDER BY item must be the number of a SELECT-list expression

Details of error are as follows.

ORA-01785: ORDER BY item must be the number of a SELECT-list expression
01785. 00000 - "ORDER BY item must be the number of a SELECT-list expression"

ORDER BY item must be the number of a SELECT-list expression

This ORA-01785 error is related with the ORDER BY item.

For example; If you run the following sql statement, you will get this error.

SELECT id, name FROM employee ORDER BY 3;

Because Select -list expression have only 2 column, but you want to order by third column which doesn’t exist.

To solve this error, you need to fix it like following.

SELECT id, name FROM employee ORDER BY 2;

OR

SELECT id, name FROM employee ORDER BY 1;

OR

SELECT id, name FROM employee ORDER BY 1,2;

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