You might have non-printable characters in the cell. If the cell A1 appears
as being ABCD then =LEN(A1) should say 4. If there are hidden characters in
the cell, the answer will reflect them. Perhaps the other dept. entered the
part number as ABCD with hidden characters and is now sending those to you.
A fast way to see if there are non-printables is just to select the cell,
press F2 and watch the cursor as you step across the cell with the left
arrow key. There should be a visible character to the left of the cursor for
each character except the first..

Tyro

"PatG" wrote in message
...
I receive a monthly spreadsheet from another department that I re-sort by
product numbers using a custom sort list.
Recently one of the product numbers was not being recognized so it would
be
pushed to the end of the list every time. It also was not recognized when
running a macro.
I found that by "clearing" the cell and re-typing the product number
fresh,
it will get picked up and appear at the correct place on the list after
sorting.
(NOT deleting, or cut/pasting or copy/pasting or paste-special value
only -
none of which work)
Any idea what causes this?
Using Excel 2003