Thank y'all,
I figured out why =--A1 didn't work. It was because in A1 was the header
Extensions. So I did =--A2 and that worked. The only problem though is that
for the extensions that have either one or two 0's as the first numbers, the
0's are taken out. We need the extensions to show 0067, 0324, etc. After I
sorted putting them in number format, I changed them to text file. Then I
did another sort and it went back to the previous problem. So what I think
is happening is for some reason the sort w/ text format formats the first 378
numbers from 1044 to 9814, then starts again in row 379 with 0067 and goes to
9972. This confuses me because I think because of it being in text format
that 0 would come after 9. But I don't see why the rest of the numbers
wouldn't be before the numbers that start with a 0. But that still wouldn't
help because we need all the extensions in order.
I hope I'm explaining this correctly.
I really appreciate your help.
Thanks,
Pat


"Trevor Shuttleworth" wrote:

Pat

what error message ? If you got #VALUE!, I guess there are non-displaying
alpha characters in the cells. I suspect that Pete's suggestion would give
the same result if that's the case.

You didn't say where the data came from. Was it downloaded ?

If the data is left aligned,the cell has something other than numeric data
in it.

Try putting: =LEN(A1) in cell C1 and dragging down. If the length of
data is not the same as the visible number of digits, you've got some
non-display characters in there.

Regards

Trevor


"Pat Hughes" wrote in message
...
Thanks Trevor,
It didn't work. I am in Excell 2000. I tried putting cell B1 as =--A1
but
I just got an error message. I tried B1 as =-A1 but the same results.
We've
tried changing the format for the numbers to be all text and all numbers
but
that didn't work.

Pat

"Trevor Shuttleworth" wrote:

Pat

where did the data come from ? It sounds like some are true numbers and
some are text values that look like numbers.

Depending on the version of Excel, I would have thought you'd see a
warning
asking if you want to sort everything as numbers

Assuming your data is in column A starting in row 1, try:

cell B1: =--A1

and drag down. With a bit of luck you'll end up with column B having a
list
of true numbers.

Now sort on column B. You could Copy and Paste Special | Values if you
want
to lose the formulae.

Regards

Trevor


"Pat Hughes" wrote in message
...
A friend of mine is trying to sort 1 column in a spreadsheet. The
numbers
are 4 digit extension #'s. There are 707 numbers, rows, and only the 1
column. Nothing fancy. When we try to sort only the first 397 rows.
The
header, Ext, is in the first row. Starting with the 398 row the
sorting
starts all over again from there. We can't get them to sort all of the
707
extension numbers. We have tried changing everything. I added another
column with misc. numbers using the same number of digits and
everything.
That row sorted fine with all 707 numbers. I tried sorting the 2
columns
together but only the bogus column sorted the whole column but the
extension
numbers column only sorted up to the 397 row. This seems so silly and
should
be easy. We've checked and unchecked lock to see if that had anything
to
do
with it but nothing.

Thanks,
Pat