Automatically sort column numerically?

Hello helpful people

I have a sheet which performs a bunch of calculations on a list of input numbers.

The results of the calculations are rendered to a column (Say A1:A2500)
The formulae for these calculations are in the cells A1:A2500 (different formula for each cell)

I need to automatically keep the results column sorted in ascending numerical order, to perform a VLOOKUP on them.

I have all the rest of it working fine but I can't find how to perform this (probably!) simple task anywhere.
A manual sort of the column results in no change to the order at all, I am guessing because of the formulae in the cells overriding the sort function??

As for doing it automatically - I'm lost - because my area of expertise is in what I want the spreadsheet for and not in writing Excel spreadsheets

I will be very grateful for any pointers any of you can give me.

Thanks loads in advance.

That was quick! Thanks for your reply Martin.

I should have posted I have already checked that, in fact the whole spreadsheet is formatted for numbers.

It doesn't matter if I click the sort button in the bar or go into the Data menu and sort from there.

There is no header either.

OK - it appears I have two problems.

My Excel will not sort ANY column where the cells contain formulae! Only columns with data I input manually
I have tried this 3 times now on new Workbooks and the result is always the same.

Solving this will still not help me in my search of how to do this automatically.

Hmmmmm




iBook G4

OS 10.3.9

Microsoft Excel X (Office X) for Mac

If I understand you correctly, you want to sort so that you can do a VLOOKUP on that column? Contrary to popular belief, VLOOKUP does not require that the data be in order if the formula is set up properly. You need FALSE to be your 4th argument.

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I'm still curious as to why you can't sort. What version of Excel are you working with?

ChemistB

Ahh, if you're not looking for exact matches then that sort is necessary.

I know that the MAC version of Excel does have it's little idiosyncrasies but do not use a MAC so can't help you. Maybe we should have a specific folder for MAC users just as we have one for 2007.

ChemistB

The problem with the sort was the column contained

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and not

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