Changing sort order

[dgallup]

Sorting part numbers in ascending order produces the following result:

430-100
430-101
430-98
430-99

Is there any way to change the results of sorting so that part numbers would come out in the following order:

430-98
430-99
430-100
430-101

I see where it is possible to sort by days of the week and months of the year under options. Is there some way to define my own sort order?

 

[GregLocock]

Parse the numeric out of your part number in a separate column and then use that to sort by

Or, change your part numbers to 430-098 etc





Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[IFRs]

See Tools/Options/Custom Lists and see if you can make one that does your job. I tried making a custom list usint 430-97,430-98,430-99,430-100,430-101,430-101 and it then sorted the list the way you want. You can create the list using formulas and Excel then use that range of cells to define the list.

 

[pablo02]

Try the suggestions mentioned -- I think what is happening in your case is that the part numbers are being treated as text and not numerical, thus it will sort from left to right (i.e. 1 comes before 9 in column 5)...

 

[MintJulep]

Make a second column, but instead of the hyphen, use a decimal point. Then sort both columns accending based on the values in the column with the decimal numbers.

I thought that I once saw a check box option that said "treat text that looks like a number like a number", but I can't find it anymore. It might have been in a different program, maybe Access.

I did however come across this tidbit in the help:

Apostrophes (') and hyphens (-) are ignored, with one exception: If two text strings are the same except for a hyphen, the text with the hyphen is sorted last.