Hi Craig

If you use ISO dates you can sort them
http://www.rondebruin.nl/isodate.htm


6. If you pre-format a range of cells as text, you can enter all dates as yyyy-mm-dd including dates that are before 1900-01-01

(Or 1904-01-01 if you use the 1904 Date System).

This allows subsequent sorting of the dates into date order. Without pre-formatting as text, sorting will sort date serial numbers
in

date order and (pre-1900) text dates in alphanumeric order.


See also John's site for a add-in
http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/files/xdate.htm


--

Regards Ron de Bruin
http://www.rondebruin.nl/tips.htm


"Craig" wrote in message . ..
I am preparing a historical timeline in Excel 2003 with all the dates in one column. I need two different date formates which are
sortable (for exambple: "July 4, 1776" and "1492" (when the exact day is not neccessary)). Any ideas?
thanks...Craig