Changing the *display* format of a cell from number to text does not affect
the content. If it was previously a number it will still be a number. You
can check with ISNUMBER and ISTEXT. If you want to enter a number as text
you need to format the cell as text *before* you type in the number.
If you want to change your existing numbers to text, try =C1&""
--
David Biddulph

"javamama" wrote in message
...
Hi, I believe there is a bug in excel 2007 for sorting function. I have a
worksheet with the first column being a building code. Some of the codes
consist of a number only(such as 1001), and some with a number and a
letter(such as 1001a). my intent was to be able to sort these codes
numerically, such as 1001, 1001a, 2000, etc. I painted down the column
and
did a format, format cells, text. Then tried to sort. excel put the
numbers
with letters after all the pure numbers, even though I attempted to format
all the cells as text. I was able to find a work around: I inserted 2
columns to the left of my building code column. In the first column, I
inserted the formula "=type(C1)". this column returned some type 1's
(number) and some type 2's (text) even after I had painted down the column
and formatted all the cells as text. Then I painted the building code
column
down and formated as number, then input "=text(C1,0)" in the 2nd column,
which forced all the building codes to be type text. Then I was able to
sort
numerically. The point is that excel should have made all the building
codes text when I painted down the column and did a format, format cells,
text, but it didn't. Have you had other reports of this problem?

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