excel help for sorting data?

Question

i need to know if there is any way to arrange a column of cells according to how many numbers and letters there are in each cell.

i.e. cells containing least amount of numbers and letters go to the top and cells containing more go to the bottom.

does anyone know if there is a way of doing this?

Answer 1

If your data is in column A:-
In column b1 type
=len(a1)
Drag this down to the bottom. Select both columns a and b. Data -> Sort. Sort by column b ascending.

Answer 2

Of course there is but it takes a bit of macro programming.

Here's how I'd do it:

1. Convert the contents of the original cells into strings and store the character counts in a new column
2. Sort the new column
3. Write a macro that converts the original cells into strings again, counts the number of characters in the strings and posts cell reference against newly sorted column.

Answer 3

Wow that is a tough one... I used the help assistant and typed in Character Count. There may be a way to use the LEN function, not really sure you would have to mess around with it to get it to work and it may only do text (letters) and not numbers. Also check out the article be low on word counts.