Sorting by Date when some dates span over several days

[Sarah C]

Hello! I am creating a spreadsheet that is a list of events for various
organizations. one of the columns is the date of the event, and many events
span over several days, so the date is written as Januray 1-3, 2008. I have
this column automatically formatted to read the data as a date, so if I type
1-2-08 it automatically changes it to read January 2, 2008. The chart is
sorted first by organization, then by date. If I type 1-2-4-08, it can't make
sense of that, so I have to manually retype it to read January 2-4, 2008. Is
there any sort of programming I can do to make excel understand what Januray
2-4, 2008 means and have it sort accordingly? Thank you!

 

[Sarah C]

I forgot to say that I'm using Excel 2003. Thanks!

 

[Bernd P]

Hello Sarah,

I suggest to use Excel standard data types: Take two cells for a date
range and put in start date and end date, for example.

You avoid major hickups with data input, processing and output.

Even if you are forced to finally show the data as you described it
then you only need to deal with the output side...

Regards,
Bernd