Could be a bunch of reasons - starting with inherited data or input from another source that stores data that way. We have an app that gets data from computerized biotech equipment in that format: A1, A2 ... A12, B1, B2......
Needs to be sorted just like Mike Mead's does.
However if I were doing it I'd try to change the data to A0001, A0014, A0100, etc. on import/addition. Then it would automatically index correctly.
>Just out of curiousity.... why does it need be A100? Whats wrong with an integer?