Arno, HL or anyone else who can help - I don't quite understand your
solutions, maybe you can help me by explaining a little more - I have this
problem too and it is driving me crazy. I have an extract from our
accounting system of several thousand lines of accounting codes - but some
are pure numbers and others are alpha-numeric, for example 6103, 6103A,
6103B, etc. I have no control over what format these come into Excel as.
All of the numerics sort separately from the alpha-numerics, so my vlookup
formula won't work. The microsoft web site says that to sort mixed data it
needs to all be formatted as text using the Format-Cells menu, the Numbers
tab, click Text, THEN RETYPE THE VALUE IN THE CELL (YES, I KNOW, I'M
SHOUTING!!). They must be kidding! I have thousands of lines and can't
RETYPE all of those cell values. Is there any way to easily get the entire
column of numbers into text format after the fact AND have the vlookup
formulas work without retyping? Microsoft website says format as text first
when typing in new data, but that doesn't help when I have an existing
extract. Help???? Thanks!