I have spent an hour and a half trying to figure out the following.
Please help. I want to sort a column in Excel by the number of
characters in the cell. How do I do it??

Joel

---

Clarification of Question by joel1357-ga on 25 May 2003 00:46 PDT

I'll tip you five bucks if you will add the following info to your
answer. I forgot to include it in my question. I actually would like
to be able to sort by the number of characters in the column but then
I would like to have the option of also sorting A-Z within each group
of letters.

---

Request for Question Clarification by maniac-ga on 26 May 2003 07:55 PDT

Hello Joel357, 

Just to make things clear... 
 - you do not want an answer that uses cells outside the list 
 - you want it "easy to use". For example: select some cells and use a
single menu item or keyboard command to do the sort.
Based on those assumptions, I have a Visual Basic macro that does this
(and tested using a few word lists). It sorts by both length and
alphabetically. With a slight change, it sorts by length only.

Would that be an acceptable answer?
 
If so, please let me know so I can post the macro as an answer along
with an explanation of how to add it to your spreadsheet. If not,
please indicate what other restrictions you may have so we can provide
a proper answer.
  --Maniac

---

Clarification of Question by joel1357-ga on 26 May 2003 16:18 PDT

I can't remember the name of the person that originally answered my
question. I would like for you to post your answer again. Once the
original person posts their answer I will leave a generous tip (both
for the answer and as a tangable way of saying I'm sorry for my
comments).

After much effort trying to figure out how to utilize the answer I
received to solve my problem, I went to bed without the solution.
After a night of much needed sleep, I came back to this site to try
again. Expertlaw-ga had left a comment that really struck home.

I took all of those comments to heart.

I think it is important to recall how frustrating computer problems
can be. What seems like a simple solution, as understood by people
familiar with a particular program or operating system, can seem like
Greek to a novice. Also, some people who want to do something directly
will not appreciate being told that the best solution is a work-around
- even when there is no direct solution. It often takes time and a
patience for people to develop an understanding of the limitations of
a given application. In the interim, let's try to be polite.

After contemplating this for several minutes I decided to try to solve
my problem again. I realized that the one piece missing from the
answer was a simple box that said (would you like to expand your
selection or would you rather continue with your current selection.
Since I was unfamiliar with what I was doing, I kept clicking
on..continue my current selection because I didn't want to mess up my
spreadsheet and more importantly because I wasn't told to do it in the
answer.

I apologize for my comments. Thank you for trying several times to
help solve my problem.

Joel

Joel,

The researcher who originally answered your question was secret901.

You might have to post a new question for secret in order to catch
his/her attention and get him (her) to re-post the answer here.  I
don't know that this researcher would otherwise want to come back to
this (original) question to catch up on the comments.

Glad a good night's sleep helped! r2l