Q: I want to reload numbers 09

Hi Andy,

Numbers 2.3 still there on your Mac. Look in the iWork '09 subfolder in Applications.

If you've opened documents in Numbers 3.0 that you want to take back to Numbers 2.3 in your menu File>Export to> Numbers '09...

Apple has said in this support document that multiple column sort will be reintroduced.

Meanwhile, there are easy workarounds in Numbers 3.0.

Say you have columns A, B, and C and you want to sort first by A then by C then by B. Add a column D with the formula =A&C&B and sort by column D.  This is easy to do. But it doesn't always work well, in which case you sort first by column B, then by column C and then by column A (in other words in the reverse order from what you might think.)

See these threads on features gained, features lost, and workarounds for more on the differences between the versions.

SG

Hi Andy,

You mean one of the several columns you are trying to sort is formatted as Number?

There's an easy way to deal with that, but could you post a screenshot showing what the columns you are trying to sort look like and the order you're trying to sort them?

(To post screenshot: shift-command-4, hold mouse down and drag crosshairs across the area you want to capture, release and a file named something like Screen Shot 2013-11-24 at 7.27.28 PM.png will be placed on desktop, then in editor here click camera icon, Choose File, navigate to the file on the desktop and click, click Choose, click Insert Image).

SG

Andy,

There have been a number of reports of erratic sorting. The sorting issues can be confused with formatting problems, so its difficult to troubleshoot remotely. Be suspicious of formatting issues if data is on the "wrong" side of the column. Some entries that used to be treated as dates are sometimes ignored and treated as text.

Text strings representing numbers that used to process as though they were numeric values are sometimes now just unrecognized strings that won't sort nicely with the real number values.

One thing to try is to create an auxiliary column in which to see if you can clean up the entries with the VALUE function. If the sort column is A, enter =VALUE(A) in the auxiliary column and fill down. Then sort on the new column and see if it straightens out the order.

Jerry

Hi Andy,

Could you show us a picture of what your data looks like?

I'm pretty confident it will not be hard to get it to sort correctly without much trouble. There's a pretty easy way to "pad" numbers, if numbers are what's causing the problem.

And if it isn't possible, it would be good for other users to know what the problem is.

SG

Is row 29 in picture, or below?

In 3.0 generally you want header rows, body rows, and maybe footer rows. Then you can sort the whole column in that table.

Here you may have a whole bunch of rows above and below, all in the same table, and you're trying to sort just a few rows in the table.

SG

Hi Andy. I can see the columns you refer to pretty clearly.  But where is row 29? 

Do you have a lot of rows above and below the picture, all in the same table?

SG

At a quick glance the sort looks ok in the unfiltered view. Is it what you want there?

If so, the answer may be to turn the filter off, sort, and turn the filter back on.

If not, how do you want it to sort in the unfiltered view?

SG