whats wrong with my sorting?

[Guest]

I am new to excel and I am trying to get numbers to sort ascending to
descending but there is stil #'s at the top that did not sort. Can anyone
please help me???

 

[Barb Reinhardt]

Is it possible that you are sorting both text and numbers?

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Trisha,
You might find some help and solutions with sorting problems in
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm

Excel more or less follows the ASCII collating sequence (number order of
characters) which places digits before the alpha characters, but Excel
also sorts all cells that the sort considers as numbers before the
cells that the sort considers as text.

When sorting you would generally be better off selecting all cells
on the sheet before invoking the sort -- the fact that Excel chooses
the current region (Ctrl+*) is a common problem that results in loss
of a useable worksheet -- hopefully you make that mistake only once
if you have to discover it yourself. The exceptions would be when
you want to sort only within a limited area and not carry other cells
in a row or column with a cell being moved when sorting.

 

[42410]

As a further rider to this problem, I have also had a problem trying to sort
a column of numbers when some of them start with a zero. I've tried
formatting the cells as text, general, number and custom. None of them seem
to give consistantly correct sorting. What's the best way? Can anyone
advise?

(Sorry to piggy-back on someone else's posting, but my problem is in the
same context).

 

[42410]

David Ritchie answered my problem in an earlier response to another
question:-

QUOTE
But formatting after entry does not change a number to text, nor text to
a number so changing the format would have no effect until reentered.
Reentering would remove leading zeros at least in Excel 2002.
UNQUOTE

Thanks David

Steve

 

[42410]

Sorry - I meant David Mc Ritchie!!

Steve

David Ritchie answered my problem in an earlier response to another
question:-

QUOTE
But formatting after entry does not change a number to text, nor text to
a number so changing the format would have no effect until reentered.
Reentering would remove leading zeros at least in Excel 2002.
UNQUOTE

Thanks David

Steve

 

[Max]

... I have also had a problem trying to sort
a column of numbers when some of them start with a zero.
I've tried formatting the cells as text, general, number and custom.
None of them seem to give consistantly correct sorting. ..

Try this ..

Assuming source numbers in A1 down
Put in B1, say: =TEXT(A1,"000")
Copy down
Then sort both cols A and B by col B, ascending (say)
Delete col B

Adapt the part: "000" in the formula
to suit the maximum figure that is present in the source col A

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