Thank you Sergey. I had tried using LEN() without TRIM and, of course, every record was the same length -- asleep at the switch.

I need this index order to assist with renaming several thousand PDF files. I am searching through text stripped from the PDF files to find permit numbers in the text. I have a table containing all the possible numbers but these "numbers" are in a character field due to the numbering system - e.g. "90-1" Therefore, a typical descending index yields "6200-3, 620-3, 62-3, 599-3, etc." I loop through the table using the permit number values looking for matches. The order is important because text containing the permit number "1620-3" will be matched by 620-3 as well as 1620-3 (I am using a "contains" statement). I need 1620-3 to be first in the table to avoid this problem.

Thanks again, and to you too Tamar for responding so quickly!