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)

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)

yeah,
gave that a try..

Even went to the source data and tried formatting one of the data cells with
'SUN' as a date to see if excel was interpreting it wrong.

nada so far... Really frustrating..

Thx, for the help

"Barb R." wrote:

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)

Try this (you may already have)

1) Select the range of data in the pivot table you want to sort. Include
the header row
2) Data - Sort
3) Sort as LABELS

"TomHinkle" wrote:

yeah,
gave that a try..

Even went to the source data and tried formatting one of the data cells with
'SUN' as a date to see if excel was interpreting it wrong.

nada so far... Really frustrating..

Thx, for the help

"Barb R." wrote:

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)

SUN goes to the top of the list because Excel assumes it means Sunday,
and it appears in one of the built-in custom lists.

When you create a pivot table, and Excel detects an entry from a custom
list, it uses that list as the sort order. So, in your table, SUN, MAR
and MAY sort to the top, and the other items appear below, because
they're not in a custom list.

If you manually sort the list, SUN, MAR and MAY should move to the
correct positions alphabetically.

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)


--
Debra Dalgleish
Excel FAQ, Tips & Book List
http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html

Barb, you rock!!

I hadn't tried that... and it worked!!

Thanks a bunch!

"Barb R." wrote:

Try this (you may already have)

1) Select the range of data in the pivot table you want to sort. Include
the header row
2) Data - Sort
3) Sort as LABELS

"TomHinkle" wrote:

yeah,
gave that a try..

Even went to the source data and tried formatting one of the data cells with
'SUN' as a date to see if excel was interpreting it wrong.

nada so far... Really frustrating..

Thx, for the help

"Barb R." wrote:

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)