In Excel 2007 is there a way to sort a column and have the sort ignore
leading "the" and "a"? For example, I have a list of titles and many of
them start with "The" as in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" or a
leading "a" as in "A View to a Kill". I'd like to sort these and have
it ignore these leading words so that the first one gets sorted into the
M's and the second into the V's.

--
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly
go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or
repair. - Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

No, you would need a help column that will remove these characters

if the list starts in A2 you can use this in B2

=IF(LEFT(A2,4)="The ",SUBSTITUTE(A2,LEFT(A2,4),""),IF(LEFT(A2,2)=" A
",SUBSTITUTE(A2,LEFT(A2,2),""),A2))

copy down as long as needed and sort by the help column

the above will take care of A and The


--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom



"Vernon Balbert" wrote in message
...
In Excel 2007 is there a way to sort a column and have the sort ignore
leading "the" and "a"? For example, I have a list of titles and many of
them start with "The" as in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" or a
leading "a" as in "A View to a Kill". I'd like to sort these and have it
ignore these leading words so that the first one gets sorted into the M's
and the second into the V's.

--
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that
cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go
wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or
repair. - Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

On 11/8/2007 9:19 AM, Peo Sjoblom went clickity clack on the keyboard
and produced this interesting bit of text:
No, you would need a help column that will remove these characters

if the list starts in A2 you can use this in B2

=IF(LEFT(A2,4)="The ",SUBSTITUTE(A2,LEFT(A2,4),""),IF(LEFT(A2,2)=" A
",SUBSTITUTE(A2,LEFT(A2,2),""),A2))

copy down as long as needed and sort by the help column

the above will take care of A and The

Thank you muchly!

--
You, you, and you panic. The rest of you, come with me.