sorting oddity

[Cartman]

When I sort below, the cell with "AA" should move to the beginning or
end, obviously, because right there in the first 2 positions it's
clearly out of sort order below. Yet it stays just as shown when I
sort it. Any good reason? Workaround?

Yet if you first append a character - e.g., a "1" - to the end of AA,
making it AA1, it works.
If you only change A-A to A-A1 it sorts correctly too. ???? (XL03,
SP2)

Note, there are no rogue "space characters" (0X20). The LENs below are
2, 3, 3.

A1: AA
A2: A-A
A3: AA-

Confirmed also in XL07 - um, I think. I can't tell whether I found and
executed "sort" or if I didn't. (I'm generally unable to get anything
accomplished in Excel 2007, so the question is asked in terms of XL
2003.)

Brainflash: is the "dash" character ignored perhaps in sorts?!

 

[Cartman]

When I sort below, the cell with "AA" should move to the beginning or
end, obviously

A1: AA
A2: A-A
A3: AA-

Confirmed also in XL07 - um, I think. I can't tell whether I found and
executed "sort" or if I didn't. (I'm generally unable to get anything
accomplished in Excel 2007, so the question is asked in terms of XL
2003.)

Brainflash: is the "dash" character ignored perhaps in sorts?!

Answered own question once I made the connection with the dash or
hyphens.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/excel/thread/6ca918b0-ab1f-4979-9c05-30b298f9d2e2/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322067 confirms this, giving useful
context
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212144 gives a slightly different
answer, but why am I not surprised
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-994842.php (the cousin Usenet
Programming group) advises workaround strategies (McRitchie)

Sorry if I walk on your responses - this is my only path the the
newsgroup at the moment and I've experienced horrid time latencies in
posting.