Thanks Dave: I tried that but it still didn't work! Eventually found out why
though: my predecessor had data adjacent to the data-table in column BI, row
200-odd, which didn't have anything in BI1 (as a header). Grrrr. Turns out
that Excel then treats the whole thing as being without a header row (wish it
would say so in Help!). Thanks for your input.
PS To do the above, I found a blank cell in the table, then used
=counta(BI:IV) to check for extra data, then wrote =counta(BI2:BI1000) into
BI1, and pasted it waaay to the right. This showed which columns had unwanted
data.
Philip

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Try giving the header row a different format--bold, underlined.
Sometimes that's enough to give excel the hint that that row is not part of the
data.
(Although, I find the Sort buttons on the toolbar too dangerous--it's too easy
to not include adjacent columns by mistake.)
Philip Hinton wrote:
I _WANT_ "Sort Data" to omit Row 1 when I select a cell in a column and use
the Sort Ascending button. This works in data tables with not many rows but
won't with the 583 rows in the one I'm working on. How do I force it to do
this without a hidden Row 2, or using "DataSortHeader Row" each time (which
doesn't "stick")?
<snip