If you collapse the outline to only display the subtotals,
you can select the entire outlined range (excluding the grand total)
and peform the sort. The detail data within the collapsed subtotals will
move with the subtotal and those details will remain in the same order.

(at least that's how XL2002 worked when I just tested it)

Does that help?
***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP


"dnamertz" wrote:

I have a few thousand row of part numbers with their costs (many part numbers
appear on multiple rows) and I have sorted them by part number, then I
subtotalled the cost column. Now I want to sort them by the subtotal amount,
so the part number group with the highest cost subtotal is first, but I want
to keep the detail in tact. How do I do this?