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Sort Excel Cells That Contain Text And Numbers

 

March 2003
Key to Instructions
To help readers follow the instructions in this article, we use two different typefaces.

Boldface type identifies the names of icons, agendas, URLs and application commands.

Sans serif type indicates instructions and commands that users should type and file names.

Q. I use a spreadsheet that includes a list of machine parts identified by both words and numbers—for example, Part 2312. Since the cells contain both text and numbers, how can I sort them in numerical order?
A. There are two ways. Either nest the text within quotes—as in “Part” 2356 —or put a forward slash in front of the number—as in Part /2356 . Either of those symbols—the quotes or the slash—tells Excel to ignore the text in its calculation and sort only by number.
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