Are you kidding me??? Are you telling me I can't sort format: dddd, mmmm dd, yyyy?

Hi

Excel stores dates as numbers, so today is 38799.
If you want to sort by bits of the date in a particular order, you'll have
to use helper columns with those 'bits' in - and sort on those.

Andy.

"mrsinnister" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> *- Well, I am completely stuck. My regional settings are in order.
> I place the aforementioned format into my Custom format list, but I
> can't find a way to get this column to sort using the Weekday, Month
> Day, Year format. Can ANYONE provide any suggestions?? I mean
> anyone?? Did I break some kind of code by posting on a similar problem
> with someone else that I wasn't aware of. Do you all just not know, or
> you think the solution is so simple as to not warrant a response?
> Enlighten me. I have thick skin.-*
>
>
> --
> mrsinnister
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> http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=32737
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>

not sure what your problem is, I set up the same format in excel, entered
some dates, and they sorted fine.

"mrsinnister" wrote:

>
> *- Well, I am completely stuck. My regional settings are in order.
> I place the aforementioned format into my Custom format list, but I
> can't find a way to get this column to sort using the Weekday, Month
> Day, Year format. Can ANYONE provide any suggestions?? I mean
> anyone?? Did I break some kind of code by posting on a similar problem
> with someone else that I wasn't aware of. Do you all just not know, or
> you think the solution is so simple as to not warrant a response?
> Enlighten me. I have thick skin.-*
>
>
> --
> mrsinnister
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> mrsinnister's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=32737
> View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=525764
>
>

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:59:03 -0600, mrsinnister
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
>*- Well, I am completely stuck. My regional settings are in order.
>I place the aforementioned format into my Custom format list, but I
>can't find a way to get this column to sort using the Weekday, Month
>Day, Year format. Can ANYONE provide any suggestions?? I mean
>anyone?? Did I break some kind of code by posting on a similar problem
>with someone else that I wasn't aware of. Do you all just not know, or
>you think the solution is so simple as to not warrant a response?
>Enlighten me. I have thick skin.-*

It is not clear to me how you want the output sorted.

If what you are storing is really a date, and not the textual representation of
a date, then the cell format has NO relevance to the sort order.

If you want your values sorted by date, from earliest to latest, you just sort
it ascending. If that doesn't work, then your data is NOT really a date, but a
textual representation of same, and you will have to change it. You can prove
this by executing the formula

=ISTEXT(cell_ref)

where cell_ref is the location of an incorrectly sorted date.

If you want to have your output grouped by days of the week, or months, or
something different than sorting in date order, you'll have to post back with
more info.
--ron

Originally Posted by Ron Rosenfeld

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:59:03 -0600, mrsinnister
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
>*- Well, I am completely stuck. My regional settings are in order.
>I place the aforementioned format into my Custom format list, but I
>can't find a way to get this column to sort using the Weekday, Month
>Day, Year format. Can ANYONE provide any suggestions?? I mean
>anyone?? Did I break some kind of code by posting on a similar problem
>with someone else that I wasn't aware of. Do you all just not know, or
>you think the solution is so simple as to not warrant a response?
>Enlighten me. I have thick skin.-*

It is not clear to me how you want the output sorted.

If what you are storing is really a date, and not the textual representation of
a date, then the cell format has NO relevance to the sort order.

If you want your values sorted by date, from earliest to latest, you just sort
it ascending. If that doesn't work, then your data is NOT really a date, but a
textual representation of same, and you will have to change it. You can prove
this by executing the formula

=ISTEXT(cell_ref)

where cell_ref is the location of an incorrectly sorted date.

If you want to have your output grouped by days of the week, or months, or
something different than sorting in date order, you'll have to post back with
more info.
--ron

Ron, you were correct. It was a textual representation of the dates in the format aforementioned. I had to manually go in to input all as abbreviated "numeric" dates in order to sort as planned. I just thought that Excel automatically recognized this text as dates since I did have it listed in my regional settings as the long date format. Once that didn't occur, I would assume that since that was the output desired when I placed the format as my custom number, it would convert it to numeric as well. None of those worked so I wasted 5 hours sorting that junk out, then recoding the text. Excel sucks.

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 12:56:25 -0600, mrsinnister
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
>Ron Rosenfeld Wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:59:03 -0600, mrsinnister
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >*- Well, I am completely stuck. My regional settings are in
>> order.
>> >I place the aforementioned format into my Custom format list, but I
>> >can't find a way to get this column to sort using the Weekday, Month
>> >Day, Year format. Can ANYONE provide any suggestions?? I mean
>> >anyone?? Did I break some kind of code by posting on a similar
>> problem
>> >with someone else that I wasn't aware of. Do you all just not know,
>> or
>> >you think the solution is so simple as to not warrant a response?
>> >Enlighten me. I have thick skin.-*
>>
>> It is not clear to me how you want the output sorted.
>>
>> If what you are storing is really a date, and not the textual
>> representation of
>> a date, then the cell format has NO relevance to the sort order.
>>
>> If you want your values sorted by date, from earliest to latest, you
>> just sort
>> it ascending. If that doesn't work, then your data is NOT really a
>> date, but a
>> textual representation of same, and you will have to change it. You
>> can prove
>> this by executing the formula
>>
>> =ISTEXT(cell_ref)
>>
>> where cell_ref is the location of an incorrectly sorted date.
>>
>> If you want to have your output grouped by days of the week, or months,
>> or
>> something different than sorting in date order, you'll have to post
>> back with
>> more info.
>> --ron
>*-Ron, you were correct. It was a textual representation of the dates
>in the format aforementioned. I had to manually go in to input all as
>abbreviated "numeric" dates in order to sort as planned. I just
>thought that Excel automatically recognized this text as dates since I
>did have it listed in my regional settings as the long date format.
>Once that didn't occur, I would assume that since that was the output
>desired when I placed the format as my custom number, it would convert
>it to numeric as well. None of those worked so I wasted 5 hours
>sorting that junk out, then recoding the text. Excel sucks.-*

Well, the good news is that your understanding of how Excel handles data input
has now improved.

There are methods to automatically change the data from text to dates without
rekeying it all in manually, but it sounds as if you are past that now.
--ron