Sort a list with December19

[GravyG_123]

Hi Please help...
In my area of work there is an organisation called December19 and I cannot seem to get Excel to treat this as a name and so sort it alphabetically. It always appears at the top of a list. I have added a ' and I have formatted the cell as text but excel still puts it at the top of an alphabetical list...
Anyone have any tips?
Thanks

 

[Joe4]

Are you sure that you are not designating that first row as the header row (so it is excluded from the sort)?
If you have no header row, then you want to uncheck that box so it is not treated as one.

 

[GravyG_123]

Are you sure that you are not designating that first row as the header row (so it is excluded from the sort)?
If you have no header row, then you want to uncheck that box so it is not treated as one.

View attachment 122724

Yep, certain. my sheet has headers. I've tried it the old fashioned select all, headers, and sort and I've added column filters and sorted that way.

However, I think I have just found a solution of sorts. This time when I selected the range to sort I was offered the option to either Sort anything that looks like a number, as a number. or Sort numbers and numbers stored as text separately. I selected the latter and it correctly sorted december19.

This option does not often come up when sorting this list of companies so there may be another company flagged but either way this has resolved it.
Can I force this option or select it before sorting or do I have to rely on Excel to flag the warning...?

Thanks

 

[Joe4]

If you get that warning, it usually means that you have a mixtures of numeric and text entries fixed together.
Usually you can see this if you widen the column and have not set any justification on the entries.
Buy default, text entries will be left-justified, and numeric ones will be right-justified.

If you go to one of the the numeric (right-justified) entries, take a look to see what Format is being placed on that cell.
My guess is that you have a number or date with a Custom Format.
If you change the format to "General", you will see the real underlying value in that cell.