Sorting Info In Excel

[rsj1]

Can anybody help me sort a column of information alpha-numerically i
excel. What I mean is I have a list of products that contain numbers o
letters or both, and I am trying to sort the column like th
following.

abc123
abc124
bac234
bac345
346abc
467 bac
cde123
cde345

I hope this makes sense, but as I hope this demonstrates I am trying t
sort with a letter first, then a number, then the next letter etc etc
The a-z ascending or descending just puts either the numbers or th
letters first, but does not take in to consideration a mix of the tw
that I am trying to achieve. If anyone can shed some light on th
matter I will be eternally grateful.

Regards


steve jackson

 

[Guest]

Steve,
Could you explain your sorting criteria a little more? I why is 346abc and 467bac in the middle of the list?

You can probably do this with a helper column which pulls out your criteria in a sequence which excel will sort they way you need.


Regards,
Mark Graesser
(e-mail address removed)

----- rsj1 > wrote: -----

Can anybody help me sort a column of information alpha-numerically in
excel. What I mean is I have a list of products that contain numbers or
letters or both, and I am trying to sort the column like the
following.

abc123
abc124
bac234
bac345
346abc
467 bac
cde123
cde345

I hope this makes sense, but as I hope this demonstrates I am trying to
sort with a letter first, then a number, then the next letter etc etc.
The a-z ascending or descending just puts either the numbers or the
letters first, but does not take in to consideration a mix of the two
that I am trying to achieve. If anyone can shed some light on the
matter I will be eternally grateful.

Regards


steve jackson.

 

[Ol' Goat]

To rephrase the question:

Mainframe data is formated as EBCDIC, but PC applications, such a
Excel, format in ASCII.

EBCDIC sorts letters before numbers.

ASCII sorts numbers before letters.

Is there an elegant way to sort an alphanumeric text column so that
'aa0000' appears before '0000aa' ? Would a custom sort list do th
trick?

Thanks in advance for your expertise. .

 

[Ol' Goat]

Uh, I answered my own question...ready, fire, aim...

Check out
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm

Look for the function "SortBCD"

Problem solved