Thank you all, Glenn Kennedy, LokeshKumar, Nisha Dhawan, for such a speedy response.
I'll send a sample sheet shortly.
Re 001, 002 etc. I also use this workbook for an addressed envelope mail merge so that wouldn't look good.
I forgot to mention also the information being sorted in the columns mentioned is taken from another sheet in the same workbook using the function ( =box_identity!E1464)