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it is a table of assigned tasks related to on particular property. i want the user on one screen to see a list of props they need to work on and in a different area review tasks
Without seeing your database schema (tables and columns), it is hard to give you any suggestions, but the reason requinix raised the question is that what you showed strongly hints that your database is unnormalized, which means that it is very inefficient. Just because you want to display data in some particular manner is NOT a reason to STORE the data that way. That's what you do in spreadsheets, but NOT in databases! This is a critical factor in being able to retrieve data with queries.
$query="SELECT DISTINCT file_id, b_fname /*,column_2, column_3 etc.*/ FROM assignments WHERE uid ='$row5[0]' AND dt_complete ='$btn' ORDER BY id DESC";