putting a column of names into alphabetical order

[ElGordo]

I have collected data with names against dates and treatments and wish to
rearrange the spreadshett into alphabetical order by name.
Some names have spaces in the name column as there may be multiple entries
of other date in other columns.
I have merged and centred these cells in the "name" column.
I still get "cant merge". Have excel2003. maybe I should take my work home
and see if 2007 excel can do the job

 

[JLatham]

You shouldn't need to merge the cells to sort them. Hopefully you still have
an original, unmerged, copy of the data.

Simply select all columns with data in them and the use Data-->Sort and
choose to sort them by the name column, all the other related columns will
"follow" along with the correct names.

I'm not certain why you're getting a "can't merge" message, but when you try
to merge 2 or more cells with data in both of them, Excel will basically want
to delete the data from all but 1 of the cells.