Ordering by a field not in the select statement in SQL

Question

I need to create a query that pulls only the customer_no column (because the software restrictions are as such, and I can\'t code it externally). But I need to be able to so

Answer 1

Use a subquery that includes the column you're ordering by. Then the main query can just return the column you care about:

SELECT customer_no
FROM (
    Select top 3500 a.customer_no, a.create_dt
      From T_CUSTOMER a  WITH (NOLOCK) JOIN
           (Select a1.customer_no
            From VXS_CUST_TKW a1 WITH (NOLOCK)
            Where a1.tkw in (141)
           ) e
           ON e.customer_no = a.customer_no
      Where 1 = 1
      order by a.create_dt desc
)