Sort not correctly sorting manually-entered numbers

Interrogation

I've got an auto-number column in one of my sheets, which has data from an excel sheet that I used prior to smartsheet. Most of the numbers in the auto-number column were from historical data and needed to be identical to that excel sheet, so I changed the column type to text/number, inserted the data with the excel's values in the "auto-number" column, and then changed the column type back to auto-number and set it to resume counting after my most recent number value.

The issue I've run into is that when I sort the row, large sections of data are moved around in the sheet and are not sorted in ascending or descending order. Any help that can be provided will be greatly appreciated.

Andrée Starå

Hi,

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s) or some screenshots? That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@getdone.se)

Have a fantastic day!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Interrogation

As you can see in the attached picture, the first portion of the "191" is moved below the "180"s when sorted in ascending order. I believe this may be the result of pasting in sections of data not in chronological order. I may have pasted the first portion of 191 before I inserted the 180's, which could be causing the problem. Any thoughts on that as an explanation or ideas on how to fix it?

Andrée Starå

Ok.

Can you share the sheet or a copy of it because I would like to look at the data and see if that's what causing it?

Best,

Andrée

Shaine Greenwood

Hi—

It appears that your values are formatted as text instead of numbers. (Typically, values that are left- justified are being treated as text. Values that are right-justified are treated as numbers.)

I'm not sure how these values are populating your sheet, but you may need to double-click in the cells and remove any non-numerical characters from them.

Otherwise, you might consider creating a formula to extract the number using the VALUE function: https://help.smartsheet.com/function/value