Ignoring characters when sorting

[amy153]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum but though I'd share a newfound solution to a problem I'd been having for a long time. I have a spreadsheet of chemical compounds along with various properties and common uses etc... which I like to be able to sort by use, or molucular mass for example.

My problem was that I could easily sort those sort of things, but when it came to sorting the compound names themselves I was stuck, because they rarely begin with the letter of the name, rather with some other character or a number. Anyway, I thought there might be something in Excel you could use to help, and after literally DAYS of searching the Web I stumbled cross a little known add in for excel called 'Chemical Sorting' which lets you ignore parts of the name like hyphens, commas, brackets, numbers and single letters. I think it's basically a normal sort with the capability of ignoring whatever you want. Oh, you can also ignore italics and bold - which was REALLY useful I found when it came to names beginning 'tert' or 'exo' etc.

Anyway, there you go! If anyone has similar experiences, let me know. In the meantime, here’s the link to the tool if you're interested:

http://uk.geocities.com/chrisdjames1...calSorting.zip