sorting

M

Melissa

I have Microsoft Word 2003 & my addresses are in Microsoft Office Excel 2003.
The zip + 4 codes sort after the highest 5 digit zip code, instead of in
with the 5 digit codes, both in Excel & in mail merge. I need to know how to
sort them, either in Excel or in mail merge. Thanks!
 
C

Cindy M.

Hi =?Utf-8?B?TWVsaXNzYQ==?=,
I have Microsoft Word 2003 & my addresses are in Microsoft Office Excel 2003.
The zip + 4 codes sort after the highest 5 digit zip code, instead of in
with the 5 digit codes, both in Excel & in mail merge. I need to know how to
sort them, either in Excel or in mail merge. Thanks!
Click to expand...
See if this does what you're looking for

1. Select the ZIP column in Excel
2. From the Data menu, choose "Text to columns"
3. Click through to Step 3 and activate "Text" as the data type, so that Excel
explicitly formats the data as text and not as numeric

Now both Excel and Word should sort the column based on the first, second, etc.
numbers (characters) in each cell.

If you don't format the data as text, Word (at least) will try to perform a
subtraction (due to the -) before sorting.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :)
 
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