sorting question

[Brian]

hello,
I am having a problem with sorting the following:

cells in column A have military time in them and to the right of A, col B
thru G are merged so that somes lengthy notes can be typed into the cell.
Now, the times in the A cells will corrrespond to the notes on the right.
ex:
A1 B1thruG1
1500 employee smith reported to work late, his assignment
is xyz....
1600 employee jones reported to work late, his assignment
is xyz....
1400 employee green reported to work late, his assignment
is xyz....


notice that sometimes notes will be entered out of chronological order and
so therefore at the end of a work night the data entry person will sort the
time column.
When the time is ajusted in ascending order the notes should follow.

PROBLEM: When I select the A column to sort is asks me if I want to expand
the sorting to the data immediatley to the right (B thru G) of course I
select that I do want to expand the sorting. BUT THEN a message pops up
stating that the in order to do this the merged cells must be identically
sized.
I have to have the A cells designated for the times and the notes cells
separated from the times and merged from B thru G. This is so that the data
is entered nice and unifrom time on the left and the notes starting at the
same point right on down the column. I tried merging A thru G and just
entering the time and then some spaces to start the notes section, but this
looked messy and plus too hard for the people i work with to remember to put
a uniform amount of spaces between all the times and notes.
HOW can I keep it the way that I have it now and sort despite A cells not
being merged with the notes data in B thru G?

Thank You
Brian

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Brian,
To keep your data on a row together,
First select all cells (Ctrl+A) see my shortx2k.htm page if you have Excel 2003.

Then invoke the sort from Data, Sort
indicate if your columns have headers.

My page on sorting is
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm

 

[Brian]

This will not work because there are other data on the sheet unrelated to
what needs to be sorted.
Thanks

Hi Brian,
To keep your data on a row together,
First select all cells (Ctrl+A) see my shortx2k.htm page if you have Excel 2003.

Then invoke the sort from Data, Sort
indicate if your columns have headers.

My page on sorting is
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

hello,
I am having a problem with sorting the following:

cells in column A have military time in them and to the right of A, col B
thru G are merged so that somes lengthy notes can be typed into the cell.
Now, the times in the A cells will corrrespond to the notes on the right.
ex:
A1 B1thruG1
1500 employee smith reported to work late, his assignment
is xyz....
1600 employee jones reported to work late, his assignment
is xyz....
1400 employee green reported to work late, his assignment
is xyz....


notice that sometimes notes will be entered out of chronological order and
so therefore at the end of a work night the data entry person will sort the
time column.
When the time is ajusted in ascending order the notes should follow.

PROBLEM: When I select the A column to sort is asks me if I want to expand
the sorting to the data immediatley to the right (B thru G) of course I
select that I do want to expand the sorting. BUT THEN a message pops up
stating that the in order to do this the merged cells must be identically
sized.
I have to have the A cells designated for the times and the notes cells
separated from the times and merged from B thru G. This is so that the data
is entered nice and unifrom time on the left and the notes starting at the
same point right on down the column. I tried merging A thru G and just
entering the time and then some spaces to start the notes section, but this
looked messy and plus too hard for the people i work with to remember to put
a uniform amount of spaces between all the times and notes.
HOW can I keep it the way that I have it now and sort despite A cells not
being merged with the notes data in B thru G?

Thank You
Brian

 

[Dave Peterson]

I like to select the whole range and not have excel guess at what I want.

But I think after you do that, you still may have trouble with the merged
cells. I've always had much better luck without the merged cells.

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Brian,
Sorry must have missed the part about merged cells -- no good for sorting;
otherwise, you would select the entire area to be sorted and included.