Sorry, I didn't see the entire post here until now. I tried the second
formula and that works, however, I may as well enter the numbers with a -0 to
start with and then I don't need a helper column with a formula. If this is
the best Excel can do with this type of sort, I guess that's what I will have
to do. Really, I thought Excel could do better. Thank you. Connie

"Roger Govier" wrote:

Hi Connie

You needed to change the formula to
=IF(LEN(A2)=4,A2&"-1",A2)

It will only add a "-1" to cells which are 4 characters in length.
Are you saying that some cells have numbers like 12345?

It worked fine for me and gave the correct sort order with your data
sample.

Perhaps a revision to
=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND("-",A2)),A2,A2&"-0")

This way it doesn't matter about the length of the numbers, if there is
already a hyphen in the cell, it will repeat it as is, if not then add
"-0" to the number, as there will not be any revisions of 0 in the list.
Sort on this helper column, then delete the helper column,

--
Regards

Roger Govier


"Connie Martin" wrote in
message ...
My spreadsheet data starts at A2, so I changed all the three A1's in
your
formula to A2 in the helper column, but what it does is simply add -1
to all
my numbers. Also, some numbers have -2, -3 and so on. The way Excel
sorts
such a list by default is that 1382 would come before 1085-1. I don't
want
that. The -1, -2, etc., indicate a revision to the original document
and
indicate whether first, second, third revision, etc. Connie


"Roger Govier" wrote:

Hi Connie

I can't figure a way to do with Custom Lists, but you could use a
helper
column.
In the helper column enter
=IF(LEN(A1)=4,A1&"-1",A1)
and copy down

Mark your data including the helper column, and sort by the helper
column.
After sorting, delete the helper column.

--
Regards

Roger Govier


"Connie Martin" wrote in
message ...
I want to create a new custom list in Tools/Options that will sort a
list of
numbers with dashes in this way:

1383
1769-7
1794-8
1849-1
1913
1957
1962-1
1977-3
1996-1
2009-2
2020-1
2051
2077-2
2079-2
2102-1
2121-1
2126-1
2129-1
2130-1
2135
2139
2161-2
2169-2
2179
2180

How do I have to set up my custom list so it sorts like this?

Connie