Clarify Sorting

J

Jim May

I've recently begun to Copy and paste-special values among other things
numbers (integers); such numbers are best treated as text << so I format as
Text afterwards; nonetheless when I sort on the field it isn't clean -
frankly, its just not sorting... Are there guaranteed steps to reach the
data sort stage "in good shape"?
Tks in Advance...
 
D

Dave Peterson

Formatting a cell as Text after it contains a numeric entry isn't enough.

You could reenter each of them manually (yechhhh!) or you could use a helper
column filled with formulas:

=a1&""
=text(a1,"000000")

depending on what you want 123 to look like as text ('123 or '000123).

Try typing 123 in a new worksheet (A1) formatted as general. Then
=isnumber(a1).

Then format column A as text and check to see what happened to your formula.
 
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