Sorting through Shelf Marks

[Jjarma]

So I have an excel spreadsheet that I need to order in Shelf-Mark order. The Shelf-Mark is a thing with a mixture of numbers and letters, and completely variable lengths. For instance DVD WB365 MEB, QZ210 DIA, and OP121.96 and Excel doesn't like it very much.
I've heard that the easiest way to sort them would be to separate the letters and numbers.

Is there anyway to do this, bearing in mind I don't know how many characters I need to have in the first column, or how many to have in the 2nd etc.?

Alternatively, is there an easier way to work this??

Thanks

 

[oldbrewer]

make every cell text by putting a single quote at the front, then plain sort

 

[Jjarma]

How would I do that quickly to 7000 rows?

 

[oldbrewer]

in a macro of the type

for j=1 to 7000
for k=1 to 26
cells(j,k)="'"&cells(j,k)
next k
next J