Have you tried formatting the source for the pivot table so that it's in TEXT?

"TomHinkle" wrote:

I've got a pivot table. The first Attribute (row) generally has 3 characters
for each data point (they are stock tickers)

I am sorting alphabetically on that field. It works fine, BUT the first 3
entries are SUN, MAR, and MAY... After that it sorts fine.

I'm guessing that somehow excel is guessing these are date abbreviations or
part of a custom list although they are simply tickers.

Anyone have any ideas??

(ps already validated there's no extra spaces in on any of those data points)