Sorting differences Mac vs PC

[Colin_Williams]

I've been sent a long list of data (about 700 names and address) in Excel format, which i need to do some work on and return to the original owner.

The problem is that Excel on his PC seems to sort A to Z differently to Excel on my Mac. We are both using Office 365.

His list has this:

E.P. Barrus
Earls Performance
EASI European ATV Safety Institute
Eazi Grip
eBay for Business
EBC Brakes
E-Bikes Direct

Whereas, when i do my tasks and re-sort A-Z by the same column, i get this:

E-Bikes Direct
E.P. Barrus
Earls Performance
EASI European ATV Safety Institute
Eazi Grip
eBay for Business
EBC Brakes


That's just one example, there are others, but i haven't been through the whole thing to check how many.

Anyone had a similar issue, or know how we can overcome it?

[#2]

Unless I'm missing something, the difference is in the sorting of E-Bikes Direct; all the others are in the same sequence in each situation. Perhaps something is different in sorting the word with the hyphen (although I don't know why that would be). But it makes me wonder what the problem is even if there IS that disparity. I.e., why is a an issue in the first place?

Or are there are anomalies that don't involve hyphens? Give is a more complete picture.

[#3]

@mathetes 

All of the anomalies involve hyphens

But that doesn't really matter, the problem is that the two installations of Excel use different parameters for the Alphabetical sorting, so give different results. You would expect it to be consistent.

[#4]

@Colin_Williams 

All of the anomalies involve hyphens

But that doesn't really matter, the problem is that the two installations of Excel use different parameters for the Alphabetical sorting, so give different results. You would expect it to be consistent.

I agree with the expectation. At least, though, the anomalies are known to involve hyphens. So while we work to get Apple to agree with the rest of the world (I'm an Apple user myself), and returning to your original request for a way to overcome this discrepancy: to the extent you need a consistent result, you could create a second column (a helper column) in which all of those hyphens are removed (by a text formula) and use that helper column as the basis for your sort. {I have the impression you're entirely competent with what would be involved in writing such a formula.}