Sorting order - text and numbers

[Guest]

I have an inventory sheet where items are listed as: BE-01, BE-02..., PE-01,
PE-02... etc. When I add new items I indicate a preliminary inventory as
(ie) BE- in the inventory number column. When I am done I may have several
items that have BE- in the inventory number column. When I sort the
worksheet, all the BE- items end up together, but they sort before BE-01,
BE-02... I want them to sort at the end of the BE group so I can assign an
inventory number by dragging the cursor to continue the series. How can I do
that?

 

[David McRitchie]

Why not let them just sort to where they will as you will have to sort them
again afterwards.

Use Conditional Formatting to Identify the incomplete ones.
I think you could use a formula like

=AND(Len(a1)>1,len(a1)<4)

More on Conditional Formatting on
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/condfmt.htm

another possibility would be to use Filter

 

[Ragdyer]

Instead of labeling new entries
BE-
Try using
BE-9999

That'll sure put them at the, wouldn't it ?

And of course, dragging down at least the last 2 old entries will overwrite
the 9999.