Ordering alphabetically in MySQL except for one entry?

You can use ORDER BY clause for this. Let us first create a table −

mysql> create table DemoTable
(
   FirstName varchar(200)
);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.93 sec)

Insert records in the table using insert command −

mysql> insert into DemoTable values('Larry');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.17 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable values('Carol');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.20 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable values('Sam');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.29 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable values('Mike');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.13 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable values('David');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.18 sec)

Display records from the table using select command −

mysql> select *from DemoTable;

This will produce the following output −

+-----------+
| FirstName |
+-----------+
| Larry     |
| Carol     |
| Sam       |
| Mike      |
| David     |
+-----------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Here is the query for ordering alphabetically except for one entry. The “FirstName” MIKE isn’t ordered −

mysql> select *from DemoTable order by FirstName="Mike",FirstName;

This will produce the following output −

+-----------+
| FirstName |
+-----------+
| Carol     |
| David     |
| Larry     |
| Sam       |
| Mike      |
+-----------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)