Sort on Alpha/Numeric cell

I have a cell with product numbers and am trying to sort. The problem is I have alpha numeric cells. The first 2 characters are always alpha. Here is an example of the problem. I need AB111 to come after AB12.
AB01
AB11
AB111
AB12
CD09
CD11

I need to sort so it comes out in order after the first two characters.
AB01
AB11
AB12
AB111
CD09
CD11

Thanks in advance

This can be done in a couple steps. First, highlight the range. Go to the data tab and click "text to columns" (alt+a+e). Click fixed width, then next. On this tab, click to create a break after the first two letters, then finish. This will create two columns, of letters and numbers. Now highlight both rows and click on the "Sort" (Alt+a+ss). You can then add a level to sort by numbers after you sort the numbers. In another column, you can recreate the original string by using =text(A1&B1,0), and then paste special the values if need be. There likely is another way to do this but this is the best I can think of! Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Mike

Mike,
Thanks for the response. This worked, I also had to format the number column as text so I could get "01" to show up rather than "1". I did create two new columns so I wouldn't loose my original column as I have cells pointing to these to pull data. I can now just hide these two new columns so it looks good.
Thanks again, Stephen

Hi

Using only one column look at Post #2 in this thread :-
http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-q...c-sorting.html

hth