Problem with hyperlinks not sorting properly

Question

I've looked at lots of questions and posts about problems with hyperlinks after sorting when the hyperlinks are to spreadsheet cells and/or when people are trying to use cells with hyperlinks as a sort key.  But my situation is much simpler...

I have a spreadsheet where columns A, B & C are a flag, category, and subcategory (all textual), respectively, and column D contains a hyperlink that's a web URL.

The flag column (A) is basically just a yes or no that indicates whether the row is obsolete.  Over time, a row may have this value changed from no to yes.  And new rows, sometimes with new category or subcategory values, get inserted.  I simply want to occasionally sort the rows of the table to move the obsolete ones to the bottom and put the rest in alphabetical order.  Seems simple: sort first on column A, then on column B, then on column C (all alpha sorts, A to Z).

Problem is that many of the column D entries are out of whack after the sort.  Since column D cell values aren't involved in the sorting and as the hyperlinks in those cells aren't referential to other cells, I see no conceptual problem.  Why doesn't this work?

I'd bet that if I removed the hyperlinks from column D, just leaving the URLs as, say, text, there'd be no problem (I'm so confident of this that I haven't tried it;  if that failed, all my confidence in Excel would be shaken).  But I need to be able to click on the cells in column D and have it launch a browser, opened to the URL listed, because constantly copying and pasting the URLs would be too slow (not to mention that it would get tedious and annoying).

Am I making some mistake that ought to be obvious or am I staring some solution in the face without seeing it?

Answer 1

Harrow --

Thanks for your reply.

I may have been a bit too vague.  The URL hyperlinks in column D reliably open the URLs specified.  The problem is that they don't reliably move with the rest of their row data when a sort is done that reorders the rows.  (And, to reiterate what I explained initially, column D is not used as a sort key.)  Maybe there has been no misunderstanding, but I wasn't sure from the way you worded your reply.

So, for example: the link to delta.com that had been in the row for which column A listed Delta Airlines might end up, after a sort, on the row for Qantas or Emirates (or whatever).  Clicking the column D cell with the delta.com hyperlink still reliably opens delta.com in a browser window.  But that cell content is supposed to be in the column D cell for Delta Airlines (where it was before the sort).

What you suggest may nevertheless be a worthwhile experiment.  Before trying it, though, I'm going to wait to see if over the next week or so others indicate that they've got the same problem.  I'm inclined to wait those few days to see if more people click "Me too" because I have had this problem in more than one workbook, and am therefore inclined to think there's something systemically wrong causing the behavior that I'm seeing.

Answer 2

Does the issue occur while opening certain hyperlinks to specific websites or any links in D column?

I suggest you to create the same hyperlinks in another workbook and then try again.

Harrow