How to convert a text string to a number?

[drkenrich]

We have about 300,000 email address in our newsletter database and need to massage the data. I've used text-to-column to separate each chunk into pieces. Now I need to sort based on frequency of text strings within a specific column without having to scan through all 300,000 looking for those with 5 or more with the same text string. I want to do this by columns so I can use it through the entire database. Here's what I'm looking for:
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen
bravide
bravo
bravo
bravo
brazzo
brazzo

to become

bravide
brazzo
brazzo
bravo
bravo
bravo
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen
Brasnen

One possible work around would be to convert each text string to a number based on the sum of the values of the first x number of characters (6). This would be a=1, b=2, c=3,...z=26. This could be done by TRIM to extract positional letters, then convert each letter to a number, then SUM the results to a new column. The problem is I can't find any way to convert non-HEX letters (g or above) to decimal numbers. I'm not experience at programming so I don't know how to proceed.

Thanks in advance.

[Moo the Dog]

If your range starts in cell A1, put this in B1 and fill down:

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then select both columns, and do a 2-level custom sort. First by column B then by column A.

- Moo