Your question was posted in the 2.x forum. Later versions of FoxPro's report writer are more object oriented, and you can literally put code before the first item on the form.

I believe I understand your desire for encapsulation of the 'SET ORDER TO...' inside the form, but with 2.6, the safest way would be to tie the 'SET ORDER TO...' to the conditional logic outside the FRX which is currently calling your UDF, say in a DO CASE . . . ENDCASE