Excel 2000 Sorting problem

[craigo]

I'm the kind of guy who likes to know why things work or not. I downloaded a table from ATT U-Verse showing channel comparisons for different packages. I had 4 contiguous cols of data with no blanks, in 591 rows. Using the AZ Sort button to sort by channel, Channel 2 came up first. All was good. When I sorted by Call Letters (ABC, CBS, HBO, etc.) MOST of it worked, but WESH came up before ABC. There are 2 WESH's (WESH2 and WESH2-HD), and I wanted them to be sorted together, but one ended up at row 1, the other at row 419. ?? Used =LEFT to get the left 4 characters in the next column and sorted..same result. I copied and pasted the values to make sure there was nothing funny going on with the data. No help. Used =IF to check if data in row 1 was the same as row 419. It was. Double checked with =EXACT. They were. But they wouldn't sort together. Mentioned to my wife, who came in, highlighted the entire table, used Data, Sort, and the same column I was using, and TADA!!!! It worked for her. Problem solved!! THIS WILL NEVER DO!!!! I can't allow her to be the expert!! I've used the buttons for years, and never encountered a problem (that I know of). Can anyone tell me what happened? Please?? I would hate to think that the work I've been doing may be inherently wrong.

 

[Ruddles]

Make sure you set the option "My data has headers" correctly depending on whether you've selected the header row with your mouse.

Is that it? Is it? Is it? Huh?

 

[craigo]

You have put me on the right path. There was no header row. However, as far as I know, the "option" you mention only exists under the Menu choices, not using the Sort Buttons. After your response, I did put a header row in, selected the first data row, and the buttons worked as expected. So, once again, I did learn something new: Don't use the sort icons if you don't have a header row. I wonder how many tables I've screwed up because I didn't realize that!!