[weld]

I have a long list of students. Each student's name is in a separate cell, first name first and last name last: "Susan Smith," for example, and not "Smith, Susan." They're all in one column; I'd rather not have the first and last names in separate, adjacent columns, nor do I want to put the last name first. Is there any way to alphabetize this list by last name?

[Skybolt]

What software are you using? In some software, you can choose to sort by the "second field" and this may be available in your package. But we would need to know in order to help you.

[weld]

Good point--don't know why I forgot to mention that in the original post. I'm using Excel (not the latest version but the previous one; Office 2004?).

[mdawson]

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weld wrote:

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Is there any way to alphabetize this list by last name?

Short answer: no. Despite their processing power, computers are incredibly stupid and must be explicitly told what to do.

What you or I would recognize as names, a computer only sees as nothing more than a string of text. Therefore, short of writing a VBA macro you have no option but to either put the first and last names into separate columns, place the names in the ?Last, First MI? format or create a sorting column with the names in the latter format. The case would be no different if you were using dedicated database software either; hence, the reason Apple needed to add explicit sorting tags to complement certain tags (e.g., Artist, Album Artist, Album, etc.) in iTunes so that information can be properly grouped/sorted and display as expected.

[weld]

Thanks, mdawson. I don't know whether that's the correct answer, but it sure sounds authoritative, so I'll designate it as the correct answer and resign myself to one of the approaches you listed.