Excel treating people with the lastname of April or May as months

[richarjb]

Hey everyone,

I've got this really irritating problem. I work in payroll so obviously I'm dealing with lots of employee data all the time. Anyway, whenever I create a pivot table that has surname, forename etc. the pivot table always pushes people with a surname such as May or April to the top of the surname column. I've tried formatting as text before and after dropping into a pivot table but excel just ignores it. It always treats the surname as a month of the year. I just can't get it to sort properly in strict alpha order. Has anyone had the same issue? I mean it's not critical but for me it's a real pain in the - well you know.

 

[richarjb]

Thanks Jamcall. I'll give that a go too

 

[jamcall]

Thanks Jamcall. I'll give that a go too

No problem, I think Krayon's solution will have fewer clicks and is more intuitive - if anything about pivot tables can be considered intuitive (also not a fan). But either way, you'll get from point A to point B.

Cheers,
~ Jim