Word mail merge recipients consistantly produces this?

[JethroUK©]

I have a field which contains a code - to force the codes into alpha sort
order i have prefixed each with a number (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, etc)

Did a primary sort on this field with Word mail merge recipients and it
consistantly produces this?

2b N Mon - Thu
2b N Mon - Thu
2c N Mon Wed
1c Leics
1c Leics
1c Leics
1c Leics
2b N Mon - Thu
2a N Mon Tue
2a N Mon Tue
2c N Mon Wed
2c N Mon Wed
2c N Mon Wed
3L Wed Thu

Anyone see why?

P>S these are just top records - there are some '1a' prefixes miles down the
list?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Assuming that this is a "file data source" such as a .txt file or Word .doc,
it's probably because Word uses a rather crude internal dialect of SQL that
does not know how to sort properly. In this case, what I suspect happens is
that Word sees the digits at the beginning of the data, decides that the
column is numeric, sorts the numbers but does not take any alpha data into
account. But it's just a guess on my part.