Sorting differences on PC vs Mac

[happylinenco]

Hello, 

I am having an issue with sorting. I am on Mac and my colleague is on PC. We have a file with product names that is being sorted differently on the two devices in Excel. 

On Mac it is sorted like so:

A-PIL

A-QTH

A-WB

A-WBC

A-Z

On PC it is sorted like so:

A-PIL

A-QTH

A-WBC

A-WB

A-Z

Basically, the WBC and WB is flipped on the two devices. On Mac it thinks that WB comes higher in the alphabet than WBC and on the PC it is vice-versa. This is causing huge issues for us. 

I have not been able to find this issue elsewhere on the web sadly. I am unable to tell if this is a Mac vs. PC issue or isolated to my colleague's device, i.e. a system setting that is changing the sorting priority for characters. 

Any ideas?

[#2]

It seems to be a Mac vs PC issue as I have managed to test on other Mac and PC devices. All of them seem to sort it differently. On all Macs, WB comes first. On all PCs, WBC comes first.

[#3]

@happylinenco Both my Mac and PC sort these text exactly the same, namely how you mentioned it in your example for the Mac. "A-WB" sorts before "A-WBC" as it should.

[#4]

@Riny_van_Eekelen
Please could you try the following in that case. I can see the A- example is working correctly, so maybe this wasn't the best example. Below is the actual product names which are being sorted differently. The WB and WBC versions are being sorted differently on PC and Mac.

CASTLEUNICO-PNK-PIL-HL01-STD
CASTLEUNICO-PNK-QTH-HL01-ONE
CASTLEUNICO-PNK-STI-HL01-5025
CASTLEUNICO-PNK-WBC-HL01-90120
CASTLEUNICO-PNK-WB-HL01-90120-23
CASTLEUNICORN-PNK-PJS-HL02-34
CASTLEUNICORN-PNK-PJS-HL03-45

[#5]

@happylinenco Ah, I see. Get the same result and can't explain why. The "-023" should not affect that.

WB-H consists of character codes 87, 66, 45 and 72 (both on Mac an PC)

WBC- consists of character codes 87, 66, 67 and 45 (both on Mac an PC)

When sorting, WB-H should become before WBC-, just like the Mac does it. On my PC it gets sorted incorrectly. Haven't been a PC user very long, and never came across (or noticed) this issue. Looks like a bug in the PC version.

[#6]

@Riny_van_Eekelen thanks for trying and confirming it's not just us ha!
We have been able to narrow it done, like you, to what comes after WB- or WBC- respectively. If the following letter is either A or B (i.e. above C in the alphabet) it works fine. Letters lower in the alphabet (D onwards) the sorting is incorrect.

Very strange!

Anybody has come across this issue before that can assist?

[#7]

@happylinenco 

@cuong Does the Excel team know about this?

[#8]

what about the - earlier in the name comparing
CASTLEUNICORN- vs
CASTLEUNICO-
according to your logic that R is after B so should also cause sorting issue?