Excel sort ( exclude letters include hyphens)?

[always confused]

I'm trying to use the sort comand on excel so that my list looks like this
05-024
AB05-543
05-678
002-23

What was asked of me is to sort the list so that letters are not taken into
consideration and so that it is sorted by the number of digits to the left of
the hyphen then by value.
Does anyone know how to do this?

 

[Pete_UK]

When you say "then by value" do you mean the numerical value of
numbers to the right of the hyphen, or the value of those numbers to
the left?

In your example data, what would you expect the resulting order to be
after sorting according to your rules?

Pete

 

[always confused]

it should look like the list that I gave. so that anything after the hyphen
is ignored. and even though the numerical value of 002 is less than 05, 05
should come before 002


05-024
AB05-543
05-678
002-23

I hope I explained myself a little better.

 

[Pete_UK]

So, 05 is sorted before 002 because it has only 2 digits?

When you have (effectively, after ignoring the characters) 05-024,
05-543 and 05-678, these are sorted as text values (and just happen to
be in numerical order as well)? I don't think you can just ignore the
digits after the hyphen, otherwise you may end up with 05-543, 05-678
and 05-024.

Pete

 

[always confused]

yes, because it only has 2 digits. do you know how I can do this?

 

[Pete_UK]

I only have your posted example data to go on, so assuming this is in
A1:A4 in any order, then put this formula in B1:

=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"A",""),"B","")

and this one in C1:

=FIND("-",B1)-1

and copy these down to row 4. Then highlight all the data in A1:C4 and
Data | Sort using column C as the first sort key and column B as the
second sort key (no headers). This will put your data in the order you
require them, and then you can delete the helper columns B and C.

This assumes that you can only have the letters A and B in your codes,
although the formula in column B could be extended to cater for up to
7 different letters.

Hope this helps.

Pete