"Gord Dibben" <gorddibbATshawDOTca wrote in message
...
If your column of dates are "real" dates Excel will offer the "oldest to
newest" and "newest to oldest".

Have you somehow re-formatted the dates to text?

If I highlight all the date cells (not the header) and right click and click
Format Cells, it highlights Category = Date and Type = *3/14/2001

BUT Aha! With the dates selected, I got the "oldest to newest". Then a
dialogue box asking me if I wanted to expand the selection or not. I did,
and it sorted everything correctly!

I have lived in fear for years because for a long time I didn't realize that
if I didn't click on the header before I sorted but clicked on the "A B C"
column header, it would just sort the column and screw everything up. I
guess I've found an exception to "click on the header."




Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP


On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:22:20 -0500, "Laurel" wrote:

I have a little spread shee with a column called "date" that contains
dates
in a "*3/14/2001" format. That's what I see when I highlight all its
cells
and click "format cells." I'm accustomed to sorting by clicking on the
column header and then the "sort xxx to xxx" icon. Five minutes ago I did
this and was offered "sort oldest to newest" and "sort newest to oldest"
menu items. I don't know exactly what I did after that, but now when I
try
to do the same thing I'm only offered "sort A to Z" and "Sort Z to A."
This
doesn't work out right, of course. What's going on?

TIA
LAS