You have a problem here, because some of the data is probably stored as
numbers, those entries with letters are stored as text. The only way that I
can think of to force the sort order you want is to convert all of the data to
text with the same number of characters.

Assuming that the maximum length is 3, you would have to add leading spaces to
numbers that are less than 3 digits; you would have to convert the 3-digit
numbers to text by adding a leading apostrophe; text entries like 3A and 3B
would have to be padded with a trailing space.

Or,for the data you have shown, you could use a couple of helper columns, one
containing the 1st digit of the number, the 2nd containing the rest of the
number. The formulas would be =LEFT(A1) and =MID(A1,2,255) Sorting on those
two columns would give the order you show. BUT... if you have entries like
93A, it won't work. That would be split into 9 and 3A and will sort with the 9
entries, not with the 93's.



On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 10:27:47 -0600, chainsaw
wrote:


I am trying to sort data in a specific manner. My column shows
1
2
3
4
5
310
3A
3B

When sorted I want it to show
1
2
3
310
3A
3B
4
5

How can I get it to sort starting with the left most character and work
to the right and then down?