Re: [libreoffice-users] [Calc] Data sorting

On 12/20/2012 03:57 PM, Gordon wrote:
> Hallo everyone.
> Let say I have a list of my customers. Each raw consist of his/her 
> name and the postal address (separate columns). The address is a 
> mixture of letters and numbers. Now I would like to sort this list 
> according to customers lactation.
>
> As the result I get something like this (1):
>
> TheSameStreetName 12/1
> TheSameStreetName 15/1
> TheSameStreetName 19A m21
> TheSameStreetName 25A/2
> TheSameStreetName 7/3
>
> But I would rather expect to get this kind of list (2):
>
> TheSameStreetName 7/3
> TheSameStreetName 12/1
> TheSameStreetName 15/1
> TheSameStreetName 19A m21
> TheSameStreetName 25A/2
>
> Do I make something wrong? Why the list is sorted in that way (odd to 
> me :-)? Is it possible to get the result according to list number 2? 
> Thanks in advance for all your help.
> Regards,
>
> gordom
Gordon

The sorting you are doing is by character order. Because of the '/' and 
letters in the numbers the entry is treated as text. People can easily 
sort this correctly but is often a pain to sort this correctly by a 
computer. You would need to create a column for sorting that some pulls 
the leading numbers out of the text or using a leading 0 for the text 
sorting to be correct.

A related issue is when the leading 0 should be included in a string of 
numbers (US Zip Codes). If the computer believes the the data to be 
numbers the leading 0 are dropped. For example the zip code 08540 would 
become 8540.

--
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com


--
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted