Help with excel 2003 lists

[Twentyfour7]

Evening

MyDad appears to be using office 2003 with windows10

He has created some excel files on his desktop.The last one he did is for years 2021 -2023 but it keeps jumping to the middle of the list in his excel files so is out of sequence with the others. Does anyone know how you prevent this from happening please order the desktop?
Thanks
24/7

[Twentyfour7]

Sorry typo ... on the desktop

[bigpriest]

Can you right-click on the desktop and select Sort By and see how the icons are ordered - should be Name

[Twentyfour7]

Yes we open the desktop folder and then go to view and then sort by and Name is already selected but the file is still not at the end of list I.e in wrong place
Even if we drag to end of list it pings back to wrong place

[bigpriest]

Check the filename for extra spaces, underscores etc? Otherwise, it's someone else's computer with a problem so run away quickly or you'll regret it

[CoolHands]

Rename it with an x at beginning or something. Then save and rename back as you want it.

[Twentyfour7]

Ok thanks both very much, will take a look in the morning

[Meeten-5dulx]

Find the list.
Add another column with the formula TRIM(CELL REF)
this should now have a “clean” name.
List by name.
Overwrite original list with this new list that should remove additional syntax.

[CoolHands]

Oh, OP are you talking about the list of file names, or a list within an excel sheet?

[xeny]

Twentyfour7 said:

Does anyone know how you prevent this from happening please order the desktop?

Doesit help if you use a naming standard like https://xkcd.com/1179/ and sort by name?

[Twentyfour7]

CoolHands said:

Oh, OP are you talking about the list of file names, or a list within an excel sheet?

A list of file names not a list within spreadsheet thank you

All his files like word, excel are in a folder I think named desktop

[Mr Pointy]

Twentyfour7 said:

A list of file names not a list within spreadsheet thank you

All his files like word, excel are in a folder I think named desktop

Within Explorer (or similar) files are displayed in alphanumerical order so he needs to name them in a way that will show correctly - you can't force a custom display order.

If you have the same file with a different date differentiator then you need to use the ISO format to get it to list correctly eg:
My File 2021-05-05.xls
My File 2021-05-06.xls

The other way to get them to list in the right order is to use a prefix:
01 - My File 2019-20.xls
02 - My File 2020-21.xls

[hungry_hog]

Assuming the most recent Excel file is the one you want to access, wouldn't that come up top in your recent Windows files anyway?

Assuming you can see it there you should be able to right click and 'pin' the file to the top of the list

You can also sort by create, or modified date as an alternate

Failing that hard code the names A-Z as suggested, could be a tedious task if you have a lot of them

and please don't call them lists

[Twentyfour7]

Thank you Bigpriest and everyone
as Bigpriest said all it was a slightly different file name
You have made an 89 year old very happy!