Sort by state not working

I saw this thread, http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...ght=sort+state but it doesn't seem to work for me.

I have a huge spreadsheet, listed alphabetically by first name. I'd like to sort by state.

I click on the entire spreadsheet (button to the left of column A) and sort, selecting the header titled "state". It sorts but it's not keeping rows together.

example:
Row #4: Alan X, Encino, CA.

when sorted:
George Y, Encino, CA

Help?

Hi Trish,

Thanks so much for responding. Rather than sending the entire spreadsheet I copied 30 names ... and these sorted perfectly. I tried to sort the main spreadsheet again and still came up with the problem of the rows not staying intact.

I'd really love to zip this but it's confidentail and I can't send the entire thing.

Any other thoughts? Perhaps a cell is out of whack and I need to reformat the columns?

TIA

Ahhhh-haaaa ... I just figured it out.

I thought it might be a formatting issue, so I went through the columns.

Turns out a third of the entries for "state" had a space before the 2-letter abbreviation. So, when I sorted, only one name popped up for Encino, CA and this was NOT the name and address I was seeing when it was unsorted. So I thought it wasn't keeping the rows intact.

Now that I've removed the extra space and the entire column is left justified - I see that there are actually 20 entries for Encino, CA.

Thanks everyone ...