Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Jun 23, 2018

Excel not sorting numbers correctly - smallest to largest etc.

I have been helping a friend organize a excel file with 4 digit numbers. These numbers are in the 6000 to 8000 range. When I filter or sort the numbers from smallest to largest there are numbers , ...

excel

SergeiBaklan

Diamond Contributor

Apr 15, 2021

JRVM1

Are they actually numbers or texts which looks like numbers?

JRVM1

Copper Contributor

Apr 15, 2021

SergeiBaklan

Hello!

They are actually numbers but I found the solution to my problem... the issue was that excel automatically references the worksheet where you are pulling data from even if it is in the same active worksheet when using the match or even vlookup functions. I just had to delete that reference and problem fixed.

Find below detailed explanation:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_excel-msoffice_custom-mso_2016/index-match-breaks-when-sorting/c848e231-9e53-4a8d-a5f6-f4bf1b9f0a12#:~:text=The%20fix%20is%20simple.,just%20reference%20the%20cell%20locations.

Thanks for the replay!

aisling_s
Copper Contributor
Nov 02, 2022
Thanks! This was it for me, though I was using SUMIFS
Jon_NL
Copper Contributor
Jan 10, 2022
JRVM1

Try selecting the cells that contain the numbers and changing the formatting to NUMBER this in my case showed me the cells that have numbers after the decimal. I removed the decimals and was able to sort as usual