I am totally beside myself with this sorting challenge, perhaps one of my
peers out there has a workable solution for us.

BACKGROUND:
- We have several workbooks output from one of our databases with three key
fields (ALL are TEXT): Alpha Split; Age; and AcctNum.
- These workbooks have been generated for years without any changes to
these primary fields.
- The AGE field is a set of eight age ranges: 0-30; 31-60; 61-90; 91-120;
121-150; 151-180; 181-365; and 365+.
-- Under Ex03 and Ex07 (compatibility mode), when sorting on this field
it sorted properly (asending or descending) WITHOUT using any "custom lists".
- The only recent change was to change the output format from XLS (using
Ex07 Compatibility Mode) to XLSX.

PROBLEM:
1) With the workbook in XLSX format, the "Age" Field sorts as a true text
field (0-30; 121-150; 151-180; 181-365; 31-60; 365+; 61-90; and 91-120)
without using the "custom list".
a) Under normal circumstances this would not be a problem, but in our
corporate environment our IT has our C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office12\STARTUP folders locked down and they are NOT likely to change
anytime soon.

QUESTIONs:
1) Is our only choice (under our circumstances) to go back to the Ex07
Compatibility mode?
2) Or how can we get the sort my teams are used to and stay in Ex07?
3) How can we make a case for our IT team to open up that folder for our
staff to allow them to store custom lists?

Thank you in advance for your time and expertise.

--

MJ