Excel Logic for Sorting

[smalik]

Can someone please help me understand the logic for Sorting in Excel?

I have a column with Policy ID with 12 characters. The last three characters are just the sequence so they are not necessary when I am looking for unique IDs. I use the left function to pull the first 9 characters in a different cells. So when I sort the two columns I get different results based on which column I am applying the sort criteria.

Here are my results:

This seems to me that Excel is looking at the characters from left to right when doing the sort. Is this a correct assumption? I am getting two different results.

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks in advance.

 

[JackDanIce]

It's reading it as a string, so depending on the Ascii code for each character, yes it will affect the sort, but yes it's left to right, just like

Abnormal precedes Apple which would precede Apples which would precede Apple1 and then Apple11 or Apple1_2 or Apple22 if you sort in ascending order

 

[smalik]

Thanks.