My column A, "Account Description" is formatted as General; Column B, Fiscal
Year, is formatted as Number. On a two level Sort, Col. A and then Col. B,
all entries for 2006 appear before 2003-2005 and 2007-2008. This is true
even when I reformat Col. B. Any apparent reasons?
Catalog 2006 2,063 2,063
Catalog 2003 2,777 5,400
Catalog 2004 766 800
Catalog 2005 774 1,000
Catalog 2007 2,287 2,350
Catalog 2008 2,526 2,550
Directory Receipts 2003 113
Directory Receipts 2004 69
Equipment Maintenance 2006 87 500
Equipment Maintenance 2003 636 200
Equipment Maintenance 2004 633 600
Equipment Maintenance 2005 306 700

2006 might have been entered as a text...
enter 1 somewhere in your sheet
copy it
select column B
right click, choose paste special and choose multiply...
click ok

try sorting and see what happens.


"Hawthorne 53" wrote:

My column A, "Account Description" is formatted as General; Column B, Fiscal
Year, is formatted as Number. On a two level Sort, Col. A and then Col. B,
all entries for 2006 appear before 2003-2005 and 2007-2008. This is true
even when I reformat Col. B. Any apparent reasons?
Catalog 2006 2,063 2,063
Catalog 2003 2,777 5,400
Catalog 2004 766 800
Catalog 2005 774 1,000
Catalog 2007 2,287 2,350
Catalog 2008 2,526 2,550
Directory Receipts 2003 113
Directory Receipts 2004 69
Equipment Maintenance 2006 87 500
Equipment Maintenance 2003 636 200
Equipment Maintenance 2004 633 600
Equipment Maintenance 2005 306 700

I would suggest that some of the Fiscal Year "numbers" are text and some are
numbers.

Select that column and DataText to ColumnsFinish

Now try your sort.

Another method is to format all to General.

Copy an empty cell.

Select the "years" and paste specialaddokesc


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Mon, 18 May 2009 14:51:01 -0700, Hawthorne 53 <Hawthorne
wrote:

My column A, "Account Description" is formatted as General; Column B, Fiscal
Year, is formatted as Number. On a two level Sort, Col. A and then Col. B,
all entries for 2006 appear before 2003-2005 and 2007-2008. This is true
even when I reformat Col. B. Any apparent reasons?
Catalog 2006 2,063 2,063
Catalog 2003 2,777 5,400
Catalog 2004 766 800
Catalog 2005 774 1,000
Catalog 2007 2,287 2,350
Catalog 2008 2,526 2,550
Directory Receipts 2003 113
Directory Receipts 2004 69
Equipment Maintenance 2006 87 500
Equipment Maintenance 2003 636 200
Equipment Maintenance 2004 633 600
Equipment Maintenance 2005 306 700