You can use Data/Text to columns to splt the numbers into 4 cells, then sort
on those 4 columns. The other alternative is to pad each sectionto 3 digits
with 0, i.e. 211.019.215.070, 1051, WAN -

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:49:59 +1100, JC wrote:

Hi,

I am running WinXP and Office 2003 with all updates installed.

I have my firewall email me the log each day which I then paste
into Excel. The data is in the format

Col. A Col. B
Col. C Col. D
Date & time Action taken
Source IP address, port Destination IP address, port
2005/01/14 21:24:53.480 - UDP packet dropped - Source:w.x.y.z,
port, WAN - Destination:w.x.y.z, port, WAN -

where w, x, y and z are 1, 2 or 3 digit numbers. There are another 2
columns which are usually blank but sometimes have data.

I am getting about 100 entries per day so the amount of data isn't large
but is building - it was 60 per day a few months ago.

I have been hitting <CTRL A to select all and then sorting on Col C so
that I get all entries coming from an ISP grouped together.

However, Excel has a funny way of sorting which seems to be based on
each character moving from left to right. The result of this is that I get
the
following happening:-

Source:211.177.154.134, 1030, WAN -
Source:211.19.215.70, 1051, WAN -
Source:211.19.215.70, 1677, WAN -
Source:211.190.195.138, 2876, WAN -

The problem with this is that the first and last come from one ISP and the
middle 2 come from another which confuses the presentation.

Is there a way I can get Excel to sort w, x, y and z as 3 digit numbers? I
would like the result of the sort to be:-

Source:211.19.215.70, 1051, WAN -
Source:211.19.215.70, 1677, WAN -
Source:211.177.154.134, 1030, WAN -
Source:211.190.195.138, 2876, WAN -

TIA.