Rich, I feel your pain as I had the same problem.

what were thinking, my best guesses are, (if they matter)

1. Since you can use the apostrophe as the first byte in a cell to
"make" numeric data seem like text, MSoft chooses to ignore it when doing a
worksheet sort. Go figure.

2. The dash is harder, but it must be something like this. Excel is
mostly a numbers processing tool and a leading or trailing - is a negative
number.
One WOULD THINK the Redmond crew can differentiate a dash with a numeric
value versus being contained within a non numeric string, but then if my aunt
had balls she'd be my uncle. Also, if it sees 100-25 it could be trying to
figure out that you want 75.


Best,
Neal

--
Neal Z


"Rich Locus" wrote:

Thanks for the advice. You both answered my question and get credit... Do I
like the way Microsoft did this? NO!!! If I sort the same data in a
Microsoft Access query, it sorts correctly... What were they thinking!!!
--
Rich Locus
Logicwurks, LLC


"Per Jessen" wrote:

Hi

It seems as you have also figured out, that the dash confuses the sort
function.

I used Find/Replace and replaced the dash with a space character,
sorted the data, and inserted the dash again using Find/Replace.

Hopes this helps.
....
Per

On 23 Maj, 06:31, Rich Locus
wrote:
Hello:
I have a program that sorts a text column and then does a sequence check to
make sure it is in ascending order so I can use a Vlookup using the option
where data must be in a sorted order.

Here is a snippet of the data where it doesn't sort correctly. The field is
defined as text. If you copy and paste this into a column you should have
the same strange results in that it doesn't sort it in ASCII order. The dash
character (Hex 2D) sorts AFTER the letter "K", which has a Hex code of "4B".
So it is not sorting correctly and my VLookup fails in that area.

Here's the data... try it for yourself:

1301932-DBKI/OL
1301932-DBKI/OL
1301932-DBKI/OL
1301932-DBKI/OL
1301932KI/OL
1301932KI/OL
1301932KI/OL
1301932KI/OL
1301932-LBKI/OL
1301932-LBKI/OL
1301932-LBKI/OL
1301932-LBKI/OL

The last 4 rows should be higher in the sorted data, not at the end.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have tried to sort using VBA and also just the regular user interface....
with the same results.

--
Rich Locus
Logicwurks, LLC

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