XL97: Hyphens and Apostrophes Sorted After Alphabetic Letters

ID: Q168234

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows

SUMMARY

In Microsoft Excel 97, the hyphen character (-) and the apostrophe character (') are ignored when you perform a sort. The "Default sort orders" Help topic in Microsoft Excel Help states that the apostrophe character and the hyphen character are sorted before any alphabetic characters. This information is incorrect.

MORE INFORMATION

This sorting behavior is new in Microsoft Excel 97. As a result of the new sorting behavior, you may experience one or more of the following problems:

Cell entries containing hyphens and apostrophes may be sorted differently from earlier versions of Microsoft Excel.
When you compare the relative values of two text strings, you may receive a different answer from earlier versions of Microsoft Excel.
The VLOOKUP function may return a different value from earlier versions of Microsoft Excel.
This sort order behavior is designed be consistent with both Windows 95

and Windows NT.

 Sorting in Microsoft Word 97 also ignores the apostrophe character and the

hyphen character.

 The sort order in Microsoft Word 7.0 does not do this.

REFERENCES

For more information about sorting, click the Index tab in Microsoft Excel 97 Help, type the following text

   sorting, overview

and then double-click the selected text to go to the "Sort a list" topic.

Additional query words: XL97 dash

Keywords          : xllist 
Version           : 97
Platform          : WINDOWS

Last Reviewed: November 4, 1998