We have a simple opinion on this: a spreadsheet that reinterprets your data without asking is not a tool, it's an obstacle. The user who posted about JAN99 sorting before JAN00, while BRO00 and BRO01 get buried in the middle, is not asking for a workaround. They are asking for respect. And they are right to be frustrated.
The problem is not that the user failed to prepare the data. They set the column type to "text." They tried the apostrophe trick. The spreadsheet still decided that "JAN" looks like a date and "99" is a year, so it sorted accordingly. This is not a learning moment for the user. It is a design failure. When a tool overrides explicit instructions from a human, it breaks trust. And trust is the foundation of any productive workflow. The user's data is alphanumeric, three letters and three numbers, always. The spreadsheet should treat it as such, not guess.
This matters in a practical sense for anyone managing inventory, product codes, or reference IDs. If your data includes strings like MED00 or JAN99, you cannot afford to have the tool decide that "JAN" belongs at the top and "99" belongs before "00." That sorting is not just wrong; it is misleading. It creates a false order that can lead to misidentified items, misplaced records, and wasted time retracing steps. The old tricks, apostrophes, formatting overrides, import workarounds, are patches on a system that should not require them in the first place. A modern spreadsheet should understand that "text" means text, regardless of whether the first three characters match a month abbreviation.
What this user needs is a system that treats data as declared, not as interpreted. The solution is not another workaround. It is a tool that respects the difference between a date and an identifier. When you tell a tool "this is text," it should listen. Until that becomes standard behavior, users like Charlene will keep fighting their own software. That fight is unnecessary. And it is time to reclaim control, not by learning more tricks, but by choosing tools that don't second-guess you.