The ORDER BY position number is out of range of the number of items in the select list

Msg 108, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
The ORDER BY position number is out of range of the number of items in the select list. 

This error occurs when specifying the column index or position number in an ORDER BY clause in your SELECT statement and the column index or position number is either 0 or higher than the number of columns specified in the SELECT clause.

This error usually happens when you are using the index in the ORDER BY clause instead of the column name and you have either used 0 or the position that is higher than the number of columns specified in the SELECT clause.

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Select FirstName,MiddleName,LastName
from Person.Person
Order By 4

OutPut:

Msg 108, Level 16, State 1, Line 3
The ORDER BY position number 4 is out of range of the number of items in the select list.

To avoid this, error make sure that the position number or the column index specified in the ORDER by clause is with-in the range of items in the SELECT clause.

The best practice is to use the column name instead of the index as shown below.

Use AdventureWorks2017
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Select FirstName,MiddleName,LastName
from Person.Person
Order By FirstName

One of the advantages of specifying the column name instead of the index is that even you add new columns in to the SELECT clause, you will have the desired result with-out any errors. Using index for sorting will result in undesired results when you add new columns in to your SELECT clause.