Heirarchy for multiple sorts

[scott morford]

I'm trying to sort on an expiration date, ascending order, and on a customer name. The end result I'm looking for would begin with the expiration closest to today, then list all the expirations for a single customer together, then move to the next closest date and list all expirations for the second customer and so on. When I try multiple sort
within Excel, I still don't get all the customer expirations listed together.
Example. ABC had expirations at 2, 3, 6, 7. DEF has expirations as 2, 2, 8. What I get when the primary is expiration; secondary is name is
<TABLE style="WIDTH: 96pt; BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=128 border=0 x:str><COLGROUP><COL style="WIDTH: 48pt" span=2 width=64><TBODY><TR style="HEIGHT: 12.75pt" height=17><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; WIDTH: 48pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; HEIGHT: 12.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" width=64 height=17>ABC</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; WIDTH: 48pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right width=64 x:num>2</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 12.75pt" height=17><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; HEIGHT: 12.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" height=17>DEF</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right x:num>2</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 12.75pt" height=17><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; HEIGHT: 12.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" height=17>DEF</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right x:num>2</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 12.75pt" height=17><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; HEIGHT: 12.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" height=17>ABC</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right x:num>3</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 12.75pt" height=17><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; HEIGHT: 12.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" height=17>ABC</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right x:num>6</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 12.75pt" height=17><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; HEIGHT: 12.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" height=17>ABC</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right x:num>7</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 12.75pt" height=17><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; HEIGHT: 12.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" height=17>DEF</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right x:num>8</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

What I want is to list all the ABC expirations together, then all the DEF together. The program is to contact customers to advise them that they have product with an extended warranty that's about to expire. However, I want the agents to discuss all the products the customer has in the same call so we don't bother people over and over.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. I've tried about every way I know.
Thanks
Scott

 

[GlennUK]

You are contradicting yourself in your request ... you say you want the data in expiration order, and then you say that you want all customer records together. Choose one or the other ( the order you chose, in expiration order, doesn't seem to be the one you want now, does it? ). At least, that's how confusing your request seems.

 

[scott morford]

Glenn,
Thanks for the comment. I'll try to be more exact. The purpose of the program is to advise people that their program is expiring and that if they want to continue it, they must do so prior to the expiration, otherwise they incur inspection expenses plus the monthly rate increases. So the priority is to sort by expirations in ascending order so we get the people who are closest to expiration first. But the customers own various pieces of equipment which generally have different expiration dates. A good example would be two identical pieces of equipment that were received a month apart, so their expiration dates are 30 days apart. While we want to identify those customers who's expirations occur soonest, we don't want to call the same people over and over when we could advise them of all their expirations in one contact. Make sense? Currently I sort on expiration, then filter on customer and create groups. This is ok when there is only 100 customer names, but if we get to our goal of 3 - 4000 per month, the manual effort will be too time-consuming and expensive. The method to do this sorting is probably not using 'data-sort'. I expect I need a macro or something.
Thanks again for your comments.
Scott