Hello Renier, the type of sortinmg you are looking for is very unusual. Numeric sorting works not with string. What you need is a combination of numeric and string sorting. Maybe your database will allow you define your own sorting rules, but I doubt that. You could try a diffrent approach. use two database columns law_num, law_minor in which you store the information, e.g. law_num law_minor 1 2 2 a 2 b 11 11 a You should define your primary key as two column key and therefor it would not be allows to insert two laws with the same num/minor data but the ame num or minor would be allowed. Hope it helps. Ulli -- Lost? Get yourself found. http://www.PublisherSEO.com/3 World Wide Web Publisher, Ulrich Wisser, Odensvag 13, S-14571 Norsborg http://www.publisher.de Tel: +46-8-53460905 Fax: +46-8-534 609 06