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**Previous, VIRTUAL**

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The **Previous **method gets the previous VIEW element, subject to the applied sort order, range limit, and filter, and returns a value indicating its success or failure.

**Implementation:**

If Previous succeeds, it returns Level:Benign (declared in ABERROR.INC). If it fails, it returns Level:Notify or Level:Fatal depending on the error encountered. See //Error Class //for more information on severity levels.

The Previous method uses the ValidateRecord method to validate records that are not filtered out.

**Return Data Type:**     BYTE

**Example:**

** CASE MyView.Previous()        !try to get the previous record**

** OF Level:Benign               !& check for success**

**  !process the record**

** OF Level:Notify               !& check for failure**

**  !write error log**

** OF Level:Fatal                !& check for fatality**

**  POST(Event:CloseWindow)**

**  BREAK**

** END**

**See Also:     **[[validaterecord  validate an element .htm|ValidateRecord]]