Excel 2007 : Help with special alphanumeric sorting

[MWallenta]

I have the following going down one column as shown:

AC-1: Texttexttext
AC-2: Texttexttext
AC-3: Texttexttext
AC-4: Texttexttext
AC-5: Texttexttext
AC-6: Texttexttext
AC-7: Texttexttext
AC-8: Texttexttext
AC-9: Texttexttext
AC-10: Texttexttext
AC-11: Texttexttext
AC-12: Texttexttext
AC-13: Texttexttext

The above is how I want the column to be sorted. Instead, I end up getting:

AC-1: Texttexttext
AC-10: Texttexttext
AC-11: Texttexttext
AC-12: Texttexttext
AC-13: Texttexttext
AC-2: Texttexttext
AC-3: Texttexttext
AC-4: Texttexttext

And so on. How do I get the column to sort in the first method listed? (To complicate things, the rest of the column actually has more data, but with different prefixes, like MA, CP, IA, AU.)

[protonLeah]

You can use a helper column to build a sort key made up of the characters to the left of the dash + a number field padded on the left with zeros (or spaces). The helper column can be hidden.