>About as ugly
>
>

>INDEX ON STR(ASC(CatNumber)) + STR(VAL(CHRTRAN(CatNumber,"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ",""))) TAG CatNumber
>

Yep, almost as ugly, but not quite so bad as mine! <g> But thanks, and I do appreciate everyone's efforts. This problem "feels" solvable with something simpler, but not 100% on that feeling.

Anyway, I did first begin trying the ordering using CHRTRAN(), but finally gave up, as I couldn't get it to work quite right, and wasn't sure if Access could handle it (I haven't found a similar Access function yet, anyway).

But it has a problem with numerics, also, though this technique does handle the alphas well. However, for the pure numerics, it gives a result like:

2,27,5 for one example.

That may be fixable somehow (but might make it more complex, again). But still not sure if CHRTRAN() can be transported to any analogous Access function. If anyone knows an Access function that works like CHRTRAN(), this approach could be worth pursuing, I think.