Hi again VG,

some are pure numbers and others are alpha-numeric, for

no, they are all alpha-numeric, just excel treats them as it likes.


I have no control over what format
these come into Excel as.

maybe you have - in the exportfunction of your database or in the
import to excel.

All of the numerics sort separately from
the alpha-numerics, so my vlookup formula won't work.

this is the problem. there are workarounds for this - in the vlookup
formula like KL suggested or you correct the data eg. with a formula.
Eg. if you have your alphanumeric data in column A you could use this
formula in column B (and copy down to the end): ="'"&A1 this will make
'123 (which is a text, the '-character is invisible but defines the
content as text) out of 123 (which is a number). Then you could copy
column B and PasteSpecial/VALUES to column A - this will overwrite your
mixed numbers/text with only texts from col B. You could have macros
doing this for you.

THEN
RETYPE THE VALUE IN THE CELL

no way ;)

arno