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Unable to sort a column.

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regava99

Programmer
Feb 14, 2010
5
US
Excel-2010 : Have a spreadsheet that contained 4940 lines and 3 columns already sorted. Added 79 lines and requested a sort A - Z, expand the selection, for column C. When finished the only sort that took place was in the 79 lines that I added, instead the mergin them with the other 4940, despite the fact that I highlighted all 5024 elements. What am I doing wrong? Is there a solution? Thank you
 


hi,

Excel sort works very well. I have NEVER, in over 15 years, had a miss-sort result.

BTW, 4940 + 79 IS NOT EQUAL TO 5024???

The only time a sort may SEEM to be incorrect, is when you sort text and numbers in the same column.

I do not recommend HIGHLIGHTING a column or ANY number of multiple cells, in order to sort a table: Excel can give you unpredictable results, in my opinion. Rather select ONE CELL in the column you want to sort using A-Z or Z-A Icons -- ONE CELL.

Skip,

[glasses]Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE![tongue]
 
Skip,
Thank you for responding to this inquiry. I was as surprised as you are about the sort in Excell. However, I tried several ways, including the ONE CELL you recomended and still the sort is not right. Let me give a complete overview: This spreadsheet has 3 columns (A = Artist, B = Album and C = Title). The records (rows) should be sorted alphabetically by Title (Column C). Originally it had 4945 rows that were properly sorted. I added 79 rows and when I setup the sort it kept the original sorted items 1 - 4945 and sorted the new rows 4946 - 5024 separate from the previous 4945 rows. In other words, I have 2 set of sorted rows, 1-4945 and 4946-5024. It did not combined the two of them to create a wholy sorted file or 5024 rows. Any ideas? By the way about 1/3 of these titles are conversion from OLD LPs.
 
Did you have any totally blank rows between the two sets of data? Even hidden rows?

Gavin
 



Did you happen to make the added rows a separate table?

Yes, it is possible to have contiguous data in DIFFERENT TABLES, and Excel will only act on ONE table.

The other possibility is that you actually have an empty row between the two sets of data.

Short of that, I'll take a look at

ii36125

at

bellhelicopter

dot

textron

dot

com



Skip,

[glasses]Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE![tongue]
 
Check the formatof the text within the table. Word will sometimes assign it to 'Table Grid'. If only part of it qualifies, it will treat this as two separate tables.

If you choose Format > Styles and Formatting, you'll be able to delete 'Table Grid'. That should solve it.

[yinyang] Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Crystal 11.5 with SQL and Windows XP [yinyang]
 
Hi everybody: I am sorry I did not answer before but time is of the essence as off late. I found what I was doing wrong. When the large part of the spreadshet was created there was a blank at the start of every entry, while on the second group there was no blank. Once I inserted the blank for those entries, everything worked the way it is supposed. THANK YOU ALL for your time and effort. I wish you all HAPPY HOLIDAYS.
 
Hi, regava99.

Did you by chance notice a little thing at the bottom of each reply that says: "Thank ****** and star this post"?

Canadian eh! Check out the new social forum Tek-Tips in Canada.
I thought I had retired...I was mistaken. I used to work for a large corporation; now I work for my wife.
 
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