Filtering Data - Getting Around Blank Rows

[OakMatt]

Hello,

I have a large spreadsheet of data - each row representing an individual in the company and each column a given metric. When I select all the data and add filters (so I can filter by highest or lowest in a given metric), I run into two problems:
- First, when sorting it asks me so sort from A-Z or Z-A. Aside from the column head where the filter option is, every cell in the column is either blank or a number.
- When I sort from 'A-Z', it filters from low to high, totally fine. But when I filter from 'Z-A', the first rows are the cells with names but no data, followed by the completely empty rows, then the rest of the data from high to low.

Note: When adding the filters, I select the entire data range, empty cells and all. I've seen that feedback come up a lot in similar posts.

[GeneralDisarray]

Sort A-Z means that Excel is seeing your values as text and not numbers.

If you want to get rid of blanks, filter them out. NOTE: Filter and Sort are different things.

[OakMatt]

Sorry - it's a sorting error not a filtering error. I'm working with about 400 rows of data so manually filtering out the blank rows isn't going to be an option as we need to sort frequently.

It does seem like it's seeing my data as text and not numbers, how do I fix that? They're definitely numbers. Is it because the cells contain formulas that are pulling the data off of a data tab?

[GeneralDisarray]

Can you upload an example file?