asked on

Sort Excel Worksheet in Swedish Language Order

I just want to sort the data in one existing XL workbook (not in all of XL and not in all of Office 2010) using the Swedish language character set (I believe it's character set=ISO8859_1). Compared to English, Swedish has two additional forms of A and one additional form of O, which sort at the end of the alphabet, not with the other forms of A and O. Excel (English (U.S>.)) ignores the diacriticals and sorts them as either A or O.
I don't want to change my keyboard, and I'm not particularly bothered by the proofing errors these letters create.

I've purchased the Swedish language pack, and opened the .exe file (OfficeLangPack_Swedish_x64.exe). Unfortunately, the next thing I saw was a fairly long note in Swedish - which I don't understand beyond a few genealogy tems and some politenesses I learned as a child. But there was an OK button, so I clicked on that. After that - nothing. Don't know if it installed or not. I checked in Excel/options/language where it only shows English enabled and installed. I tried adding Swedish there, and it comes up "not enabled" and "not installed".

So what do I need to do to get sorting in Swedish?

thanks

BlueYonder

Here are instructions for a custom sort list
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/create-or-delete-a-custom-list-for-sorting-and-filling-data-HA010222142.aspx

Langdans

ASKER

Thanks BlueYonder,
Actually, I had tried a custom list, but such a list has to contain the full cell contents for the cells you want to sort - not just the letters in the words. For example: H,M,L would not sort High, Medium, Low in the right order - you have to include the words "High", "Medium" and "Low" in the list. To use a custom list, I would already have to have a sorted list of the things I want to sort. One of these lists contains the names of 3362 Swedish parishes - a prohibitive manual sort project.

Langdans

ASKER

More after poking around the internet to figure out if the language pack was actually installed, and if not - how to install it. Several installation sites say language packs are only available for Win7 Ultimate or Enterprise. There was no hint of this at the Microsoft help sites about language packs and language interface packs. I have Win7 Professional. So am I really out of luck on the language pack, or are these internet sites out of date? I also found the language interface pack is not available in Swedish.
If language packs and language interface packs are not my answer, is there some way to tell excel to use the ISO8859_1 character set when it sorts?

Cornelia Yoder

If this is a one-time thing that you will not have to do again, why don't you find a Swedish friend and email it to them to sort on a Swedish language computer and email it back to you. I'm sure there are Swedish folks on EE who would do that for you.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

captain

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Langdans

ASKER

Thanks capt.
Works like a charm. And so simple. No language packs, no LIPs.
Don't know how I would have figured this out without you.
And thanks to Yoder cm as well. Unfortunately, the reason I need this capability is that I need to sort the lists different ways (by parish, county, surname, municipality, ...) depending on what I'm tying to discover.
Langdans

captain

Thanks much for the accept, I am glad I could help

best wishes
capt.