Trouble sorting first by a dates field and then by a text field.

[Guest]

I have a spreadsheet with several headers. Three of the column headers are
"Receiving Date", "Seller Name" and "Borrower Name:. The "Receiving Date
column contains dates in the following format: 12/5/2006 2:45 pm

When I try to sort (Data > Sort) first by "Receiving Date", then by "Seller
Name" and then by "Borrower Name", Excel only sorts only by the "first by"
sort, "Date".

Any idea why this is happening?
Thank you.

 

[Fred Smith]

I figure what's happening is that Excel is doing what you told it.

From your example, your date field also contains the time. So, Excel will sort
right down to the minute, or second depending on the extent of your data. I
doubt that there are any duplicates in your date column, so Excel never needs to
use the second column.

If you want to sort just by the day, you will need to set up another column. Use
the formula

=int(a1)

which will discard the time portion, and leave you with just the year,month,day.