One way would be to have a help column, use a formula like

=TEXT(A1,"00000")

copy down and sort by the help column (assuming that they always are
supposed to have 5 digits)

--
Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

(No private emails please, for everyone's
benefit keep the discussion in the newsgroup/forum)



"Steve Walford" wrote in message
...
I am a fleet manager for a local authority, all our vehicles have
fleet number ranging from 01001 to 97001

The first two digits signify the vehicle group
01 small vans
97 mowing machines

Files are frequently imported from a delimited text dump of a sql
server, I always import the fleet number column as text and everthing
sorts fine

I frequently receive files from other people where they have either
imported wrongly or entered wrongly when creating a spreadsheet and
some of the fleet numbers are text and some numbers, sorting then
falls down, converting the full column to text does not help matters.
After converting to text the errant rows have to have the fleet
numbers entered individually.

It there an easier way to rectify this

Many Thanks


Steve