Hi
I don't think you can do this.
what might work is to include the names in an adjacent column and
eliminate the articles, then sort on that.
For example, this formula will eliminate the words "The ", "An " and "A
" from the left of the text in cell A1 (note the addition of a space
after the word in the formula, to prevent all words begining with "A"
being cropped):

=IF(LEFT(A1,2)="A ",RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-2),IF(LEFT(A1,3)="An
",RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-3),IF(LEFT(A1,4)="The ",RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-4),A1)))


--
Nicky


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