I have had "some" luck by inserting a new sheet, and formatting the columns on the new sheet as text, before coping and pasting my data to the new sheet. I always try to be sure that anything, alpha or numeric, that I am planning on sorting, is formatted as text, but once in awhile, I have a senior moment and forget, until I try to sort and it doesn't work correctly. ----- Original Message ----- From: Anne Picketts<mailto:waipucove@gmail.com> To: COMPUTERS@rootsweb.com<mailto:COMPUTERS@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 12:41 PM Subject: [COMPUTERS] Excel Is there anyone on the list who has experience with combining two columns into one, i.e. surname, given names? I have combined the columns successfully, but cannot get the names to read as text in the formula bar. That in itself is not a problem, but searching for someone in a large database is - the name comes up as "not found". I have tried formatting cells without success. Thanks i.a. for any help. -- Anne PICKETTS Waipu, NZ :-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~: Take pity on Digest subscribers and remember to SNIP when replying. :-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~:-~: ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to COMPUTERS-request@rootsweb.com<mailto:COMPUTERS-request@rootsweb.com> with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message