View Single Post
  #1   Report Post  
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.misc
amy153
 
Posts: n/a
Default Ignoring characters when sorting


Hi,

I'm new to this forum but though I'd share a newfound solution to a
problem I'd been having for a long time. I have a spreadsheet of
chemical compounds along with various properties and common uses etc...
which I like to be able to sort by use, or molucular mass for example.

My problem was that I could easily sort those sort of things, but when
it came to sorting the compound names themselves I was stuck, because
they rarely begin with the letter of the name, rather with some other
character or a number. Anyway, I thought there might be something in
Excel you could use to help, and after literally DAYS of searching the
Web I stumbled cross a little known add in for excel called 'Chemical
Sorting' which lets you ignore parts of the name like hyphens, commas,
brackets, numbers and single letters. I think it's basically a normal
sort with the capability of ignoring whatever you want. Oh, you can
also ignore italics and bold - which was REALLY useful I found when it
came to names beginning 'tert' or 'exo' etc.

Anyway, there you go! If anyone has similar experiences, let me know.
In the meantime, here’s the link to the tool if you're interested:

http://uk.geocities.com/chrisdjames1...calSorting.zip

:)


+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Filename: ChemicalSorting.zip |
|Download: http://www.excelforum.com/attachment.php?postid=4357 |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

--
amy153
------------------------------------------------------------------------
amy153's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=31546
View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=512413