UK Postcodes which sort correctly?

Hello!

If anyone can help me sort a list of post-codes in excel so that they go NE1 XXX, NE2 XXX, NE12 XXX, instead of NE1 XXX, NE12 XXX, NE2 XXX, I'd be very greatful!

The UK postcode Schema can be found here: http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/gdsc/html/frames/PostCode.htm

Why?

Because adjacent postcodes are much closer together than say NE3 and NE33 and it would make my life much easier when driving between them.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

A starting point might be to replace NE3 with NE03 so that the sort can work properly, How would I make this conversion temporarily and how would I turn it back after the sort? - should I use a special character instead of o (zero) which has a lower sort value than 0 (zero) in the ascii/excel sort logic? - but this might be barking up the wrong tree and there may be a much easier way of doing this - Help!

Thanks in advance.

Dice :-)