Trouble Sorting in Excel

[Dee]

I am trying to sort in Excel and am having difficulty. I
have sorted many times before and am unable to determine
what criteria is wrong or missing, or what I am doing
wrong. I am trying to sort a column in descending order
and the cells have numbers which are 4 digits long. The
numbers are not sorting correctly...meaning some numbers
are ending up before numbers they should be after.

I have ensured all numbers are in the same format and that
there are no blank spaces before or after the numbers in
the cells. I have tried re-typing some of the cells and
copying other cells and nothing is making a difference.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what else I can try?
Thank you for your help. Dee

 

[Ken Wright]

They are not in the same format, whatever you think you may be seeing in the Format as dialog box.
If some of the data is text, and I'm pretty sure it is, then even though it may lead you to
believe you can, you cannot just format as numeric and sort it.

Copy an empty cell, select your data and then do Edit / Paste Special / Add. this will not change
any data but will coerce it all back to numeric. Now try the sort again.