Thanks for the suggestions, Brian. I tried both approaches (good ideas, both), but wasn't successful in identifying the problem. There was no leading apostrophe for values in either group in the input line; all values appeared the same. And I left-aligned all the numbers to see if there were any leading blanks, but again, the values in the two groups looked the same.
Other ideas? This really has me stymied. Dan On 7/14/07, Brian Barker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 21:18 14/07/2007 -0500, Dan Sherburne wrote: >I have a weird problem in a Calc spreadsheet. I'm trying to sort on a >column in ascending order, and it's effectively dividing the spreadsheet >data into two groups, one following the other, each in ascending order for >that column. After it's sorted, the data in that column run from 1195 to >3672, then from 0035 to 3433. No values are repeated. The two groups >should be intermixed and sorted (in ascending order) from 0035 to 3672. >It's actually a text field, but I've tried formatting it as a number field, >with no effect. > >Has anyone seen this behavior before or have any ideas of how to correct it? There must be some difference between the values that sort into the two groups: that much is obvious. I can think of two possibilities: o Are all your values actually text entries? If some of your vales are text and others numbers, then they will look the same but will sort into two groups as you suggest, with all the numbers preceding all the text values. This is the likely cause. You say that you have tried formatting the cells as numbers, but this will make no difference, of course, to existing values: the text will stay as text. Click on a number in the second group and look in the input line: is there a tell-tale leading apostrophe? o If the values are all text values, is it possible that some are preceded by one or more blanks? You may not notice these - especially if you have right-aligned the text. I trust this helps. Brian Barker --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- Dan Sherburne Research Director Missouri Coalition for the Environment 6267 Delmar Blvd., Ste. 2E St. Louis, MO 63130 314-727-0600 314-727-1665 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
