Hi all, bit of a weird one this....

Ok - so I have a large-ish dataset with several columns, one of which is the client number. This dataset is copied and pasted from and Excel spreadsheet that contains macros...as well as lots of fancy header rows and other stuff I dont need for analysis. Hence I copy and paste just the data and the main header row into a new workbook to manipulate it and then transfer to other programs for analysis.

The problem is this: The client number column goes from 01 to 685. I need to add in extra info based on the individuals client number. The easiest way to do this is to sort on the client number column (and yes I do select all and then use "data - sort" from the menus)

Thing is..even though I make sure the cells in this column are formatted as numbers Excel simply wont sort them sensibly. As an example, the latest dataset im using..AFTER sorting takes this order:
8
24
31
55
55
95
205
228
284
298
685
01
01
01

From here on it sorts on the first digit of the numbers. So I get all the 01, 01, 03 etc, then 10's, 100's etc then 20's, 200's and so on.

Any clues why its doing this? I cant find values in there that arent numbers, I've looked for random spaces or other characters in each cell, I've also made absolutely sure that the cells are formatted as numbers. The datasets will start to grow so I need to get this sorted as eventually it will become unworkable to autofill my new column based on client numbers.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
THanks - i feel better for sharing