sales spreadsheet

[melbourne]

\1

im trying to move from a paper sales system to one in excel. here's what im using for now (see pic), its working well, but the 'time to call' bit is a bit strange, on paper im used to writing CB w13mon3p which means 'week 13, monday, 3pm'. this is a very fast input method on paper, but it doesnt 'sort' very well in EXCEL (eg. w1 w11 w2 or fri, mon, thur, tue, wed). maybe i should create three hidden columns, after the columns you can see in the pic, and get EXCEL to read 'w2' as '2'. mon as '1'. and 3:30p as 15:30p.

then create a macro to sort by the hidden columns. what do you think ?

[tuph]

Your hidden column idea would certainly work. Create separate columns (say, A, B, C, & D) for each element you want to sort by, then in column E join the data together for display purposes, like this:
=A1&B1&C1&D1

[AussieExcelUser]

And this sort of macro addition may help to automatically add in the changes to the input in order to simplify the sorting:

sub Search & Replace Macro()
Columns("B:B").Select
Range("B2").Activate
Selection.Replace What:="mon", Replacement:="1",LookAt:=xlPart, _
SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False, _
ReplaceFormat:=False
End Sub

[melbourne]

thanks for that, after all that im still considering figuring out a fast way to use a real date figure. eg. entering "12 july 07 12:30pm" my idea seems a bit silly in excel, i figure thousands of excel users have already worked something better out.