Sorting - cells containing numbers, numbers and letters

[Gunny]

This should be simple to do ...but I'm stumped. I have a spreadsheet with
legislative district numbers that contain numbers while others contain
numbers and letters:

1
2
2a
2b
3
4
4a
4b
4c
5
etc.

I have tried converting the cell format to text and that does not work.
Please understand that I am not Excel literate and any answer must be in
simple but detailed terms that someone who could break a crowbar in a sandbox
can understand.

 

[southwood]

What are you trying to do with this data? Sort it??

 

[paul]

well if i were pedantic i would ask you what the problem is seeing the sample
you have shown us is sorted perfectly.You want to know how to sort a jumbled
column to a column like you have shown?

 

[Mallycat]

this may not be practical, but if you put a single apostraphe ' before
any number, this will solve your problem.

Matt

 

[paul]

try this for starters
in a column next to your actual column or somewhere next to the data you are
sorting,have a column that shows ONLY the numbers.Then sort all your data by
that column,you may get a dialog box asking if you want to sort the numbers
as numbers,but click the text option(seeing you have text)

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Gunny,
see
Sorting, Some notes on sorting in Excel
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm