Thankyou for that warning.
I have Excel 97 with 50,000 rows
and numerous columns.
I have been using ALT / D / S with excel auto selecting all
(my header row has all Bolded Caps)

It may have saved some anguish in the future.
Regards
Rodney



"David McRitchie" wrote in message ...
| See my page on sorting
| http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm
|
| Assuming you have rows of data where all the other columns have to follow
| of the column being sorted.
|
| Select a cell in the column, you want to sort, then use Ctrl+A to select all cells.
|
| If you really want to use the Sort button A-- Z , you can try it, but Excel will
| try to guess if the first row is to be sorted or not, can be messy if you wanted
| the first row to remain in place. Safer than the sort button is to use
| Data, Sort, choose column but it should be same as you already chose for active cell.
|
| It is import to select all of the data that is to be sorted together. NEVER rely
| on another dirty little trick of Excel to extend the area for you, if you have a
| single cell selected -- sooner or later you will lose you data to a bad sort relying
| on that. That's where Ctrl+A comes in. The gray square is almost the same but
| it changes the active cell location to A1 or whatever is currently visible in upper left corner.
|
| If you have Excel 2003, you have to hit Ctrl+A twice or see macro on my shortx2k.htm page.
| ---
| HTH,
| David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
| My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
| Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm
|
| "HOW CAN I SORT BY ALPHABETICALLY FROM A" <HOW CAN I SORT BY ALPHABETICALLY FROM A @discussions.microsoft.com wrote
in message
| ...
| HOW CAN I SORT BY ALPHABETICALLY FROM A TO Z BY LAST NAMES PLEASE
|
|