Excel is not sorting - but splitting my sort into 2 sorts

Question

Excel is not sorting - but splitting my sort into 2 sorts

Anonymous

After reviewing all of the content within the Microsoft Community; I have made several changes & updates as the posts indicated & still nothing is working.

I am doing a custom sort by 3 levels:

My Process Level is column A, my Dept # is column B and lastly my Job Code is column C.

When sorting the 3 columns it was working great until yesterday; then it began to it split my sorting in two.

My first 'sort by' is process level. It is sorting properly until line 5174 and it take 668 lines of my data and are sorting them again (but will not sort with the entire spreadsheet). Below is an example:

10110

10120

10200

10300

10400

10500

20112

40120

41130

70200

70300

90300 and then it starts sorting the 668 below this.....

10110

10120

10300 and so on

The first 5173 lines are sorting correctly............and then it is sorting the bottom 668 lines correct but WILL NOT sort them together as one.

There is only one thing I have noticed that can’t seem to figure out ‘why’ this is happening:

· If I change the format to ‘Number’ vs ‘Text’; the columns are set to show 2 decimal points. Lines 1-5173 were showing as 10110.00 (as it was set for); however Lines 5174 to 5841 show as 10110 (even though it’s set to show 2 zeros after the decimal point). It is lines 5174 to 5841 that are not sorting properly with the rest of the document. Is there some sort of block on them? Why are the cells/sort not working as I am telling them to.

Any thoughts you can share to help me would be great.

Thanks,

Tanna

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Anonymous

After following the above suggestion, my Excel Spreadsheet would still not sort. After having my technology team at work review it; it should have. It was deemed that some how the data got corrupted & would not follow any Excel commands/functions. The final resolution was that I had to remove that data & start over.

I appreciate all the suggestions & 'fix' ideas I found within the Microsoft Community.

Thank you

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2 additional answers

Answer 1

Hello Bob,

Thank you for your reply.

I am still having issues with the last 668 lines/cells in my spreadsheet. Something went wrong when I did several copy/paste updates yesterday. I was copying from a new document I've never used. As a result the new data in these cells are not responding to Excel commands/functions.

I would like to send you the document to see what might be wrong with these cells. If this is possible; how would l send it to you?

I did follow the instructions you provided; but got a bit confused (even asked a colleague for help). I feel like I did what you asked correctly but I might be misunderstanding. After I followed what I thought was correct; the sort was not working. When doing the paste special & ‘Add’….it would not paste the numbers I added yesterday; and those cells for the last 668 lines were ‘blank’. If you could ‘dumb down’ the following (in case I am mis-understanding); that would be great.

then select an unused cell & copy it, select the data & paste special, and include "Add" option button.

Sorry to be a pest, but I've put WAY TOO much time into this spreadsheet to not get it ready for use.

Thank you,

Tanna

Answer 2

the values which are not getting the .00 showing are all text values and hence sort differently. Select the column, format as number (no decimals), then select an unused cell & copy it, select the data & paste special, and include "Add" option button. Now all is numeric. Try your sort again.

Bob Umlas, Excel MVP

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Excel is not sorting - but splitting my sort into 2 sorts

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