The solution was fairly lame so I didn't post the specific. I'm used to an older version of Excel that (I believe) had a primary and secondary sort field. This time, after selecting the col to be used as the sort criteria, then telling Excel to sort, I got the dialogue box that (to me) was unclear and to which I had previously hesitated 'going for' This time I saved my stuff, and did do as prompted and all turned out well :-). Sometimes ignorance is indeed bliss.

Mark