Sort by first three characters

Is it possible to sort a column in VBA by just the first 3 characters in the cells? See below and attached. I want to sort first by Range("A1") but only the first 3 characters in each cell, then sort normally for Range("E1"). I want the counties to stay grouped regardless of what comes after the first 3 characters, but then the phone numbers to by grouped by county. If I sort by phone numbers first, they aren't grouped by county. Here is what I have

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The textbook method is to create another column that extracts the first three characters and use that for sorting.

You could use a helper column with =LEFT(A2,3) and then sort on that

I was hoping not to have to use a helper column. This code is in the middle of a bunch of other code.

The file you attached does not have any code.

You can add another column way out to the right, say AYS, then change the code to the following, and it shouldn't affect anything else on your sheet or your other code.

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