Rows inserted into a List will not sort properly

[Derek Jones]

I have a spreadsheet that is sorted first by department, then by number. The
departments are sorting OK, but within some of the departments, the numbers
are not being sorted properly. This is happening in departments where some
rows have been inserted into the spreadsheet and data has been entered. In
those departments, after running the sort, the numbers of the inserted rows
appear first, followed by the remaining numbers. I've tried reformatting the
cells and Iv'e also tried copying the sheet and pasting it into a new file,
both to no avail. Any ideas?

Excel 2003, Windows XP, all SPs applied.

Derek Jones
Software Support Specialist
Shenandoah University
Winchester, VA

 

[Dave Peterson]

If that field of numbers is actually a combination of some numbers and some text
(that looks like numbers), then that could be a problem.

You could try converting the text numbers to number numbers.

Select an empty cell
copy it
select your range of numbers
edit|Paste special|check add.

(changing the format of the cell isn't enough to change the value.)

 

[Derek Jones]

That didn't work, but I found something that did. For each department, I
copied the first instance of a specific value and did a paste special
(values) in all the other cells that held the same value. After doing that,
the sort worked fine. Thanks.

Derek