The Multi-Table Query Generator - Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.8 for Effective MySQL Management - page 193

We then click Update Query . This refreshes the screen and reduces the number of
fields available in the Field selector. We can always change the table choice later
using our browser's mechanism for multiple choices in drop-down menus (usually
control-click).
Column Criteria
Three criteria columns are provided by default. This section discusses the options
we have for editing their criteria. These include options for selecting fields, sorting
individual columns, entering conditions for individual columns, and so on.
Field Selector: Single-Column or All Columns
The Field selector contains all individual columns for the selected tables, plus a
special choice ending with an asterisk ( * ) for each table, which means 'all the fields'
are selected:
To display all the fields in the authors table, we choose 'authors'.* and check the
Show checkbox, without entering anything in the Sort and Criteria boxes. In our
case, we select 'authors'.'author_name' , since we want to enter some criteria for the
author's name.
Sorts
For each selected individual column, we can specify a sort (in Ascending or
Descending order) or let this line remain intact (meaning no sort). If we choose
more than one sorted column, the sort will be done with a priority from left to right.