Numbers Not sorting correctly?

Question

I am trying to sort on a field that has both alpha and numeric characters.
ergo: I expected a sort to give me
1a
1b
1c
1d
1e
1f
1h
1i
2a
but received a sort of:
1h
1d
1a
1b
1c
1e
1f
1i
2a
Justifying the field left or right makes no difference
if I insert a hyphen between as in 1-a 1-b etc it sorts as expected.
I also tried inserting a decimal between instead of the hyphen ergo 1.a etc but  when I did that as in (1.h) Numbers (automagically) removed the decimal (same with 1.d)
Any ideas?  Bug? (An Inverse Semi Hex Sort With Left hand English?)
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi C,
Interesting spelling of your username. I'd always associated this type with dogs, not with hearts.
I think you may have discovered a bug (or perhaps more accurately  generously, an artifact—an overlooked effect of automation).
On copying your (sorted) list, pasting it in (column B), randomizing it, then resorting in ascending order, I got the same results you did.
When I typed a copy of the list into column A and sorted it, I got the same results again.
Column C is a list of random numbers, generated by formula, and offering a column on wdich to randomize the sort of the table.
Columns D and E contain the formulas below, which pick off the first and last characters of the pair in column B, then rejoin them, in one case placing a period/full stop/decimal point between them, in the other, simply concatenating them into a two character text string.
Sorting on either of columns D and E produced the expected sort:
A light was beginning to glow. Entered directly, or by copy/paste, into an unformatted column, the items sorted 'incorrectly'. Reformed into text strings, with or without a constant intervening character, they sorted as expected.
One further test: Column F was added, preformatted as Text, and the values entered into it. The table was randomized (sorted on column C), the re sorted on column F, with the expected ('correct') results.
One more check. I selected column B, where the original list had been pasted, and set the formatting to Automatic:
AHA!
Text is automatically aligned to the left side of cells. The two misbehaving items were not being interpreted as text, but as a numeric or quasi numeric value.
Numbers sees both of these as duration values—1d = one day, 1h = one hour.
Sorted in ascending order, one hour is less than, and comes before one day, and all numerical and quasi numerical values come before alphabetical (text) values.
Numbers is sorting the list correctly, using its interpretation of each value. To make it sort correctly in our view, you'll need to force numbers to see those values as text, most easily done by formatting the column as text before typing or before pasting, using Paste and Match Format, in the Edit menu.
Thanks for that question; it was an interesting one.
Regards,
Barry