Rose,

You can't. You've sorted only one column. You've done the Excel Sort of
Disaster. It happens to many. If you didn't do an undo, or if you saved
the file after the sort (after which you can't undo anyhow), you're out of
luck. A backup copy of the file is probably your only hope now. There's no
way an Excel tool could know which last names go with which first name or
other stuff.

Many have wept and wailed. Some release ago, Excel improved its warnings,
like when it sees data in adjacent columns. I think it should also clearly
warn, any time that only one column is selected, that only that column will
be sorted. I don't think it's likely to happen.

If you're using Word for the mail merge, you can sort the output on any of
the fields, instead of first sorting the Excel list. How you do it varies
with the version of Word.
--
Earl Kiosterud
www.smokeylake.com
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"roselaurel" wrote in message
...
Hi,
This may sound pretty stupid to you guys but I'm stumped. I have a spread
sheet I created that is nothing more than a list of names and addresses. I
wanted to do a mail merge. Anyway I accidentally sorted only the last name
column decending. Now all the last names are not 'connected' to the
correct
first names! I tried exiting the sheet and saying 'no' when asked to save
the
sheet. Didn't help! How can I get these names back where they belong?