I have used Paste Special a lot. To get rid of those formulas, you could copy the data, and then use Paste Special - Values over the same region. That would allow you to sort the data without issues.
Absolutely! I used to spend an enormous amount of time cleaning this kind of thing up manually, and a woman I used to work with showed me how to do this...it has saved me literally DAYS of manual manipulation over the years.
(NOTE: I am going to go off topic here for a minute, because this was an interesting (to me) encounter with someone who totally did not see the world as I did in many respects)
Funny. This woman who showed me this trick was a real “Liberal” too...about as far away from my views as could be, but we respected each other and even socialized.
You will notice I make a differentiation between “Liberals” and “Leftists”. Leftists can be and almost always are Liberals too, but Liberals are not always Leftists. Liberals are often intellectually lazy or too busy to think in depth and therefore drift with the tide and can be reachable in many cases, whilst Leftists are not reachable unless there is a traumatic event (like a drunk reaching bottom) that forces them to re-evaluate who and what they are, and break with it.
David Horowitz, is the perfect example of a Leftist who is a die-hard, capital C Conservative today, but in 1971, he was as far Left as most people would ever go, and was serving in an executive role with the Black Panthers. But when a white woman he admired and worked with was raped and murdered by the Black Panthers because they thought she knew too much) he cut ties with the Left. But it took him nearly ten years where he drifted in between ideological moorings, until he fully embraced Conservatism. His book “Radical Son” is an excellent read on this subject of Leftism, and describes his journey.
Anyway, back to my anecdote...:)
In our systems, we have to put fake patients into test systems to facilitate testing, and back in 2008, while we were testing, I saw that there was a test patient she entered named “Sarah Alaska” which tickled me...she was throwing me a bone there as a joke, and I appreciated it with a grin. So one day, I am over in her office discussing these things, and a wiry, older woman, a lantern-jawed Irish woman came stomping in.
She said “What is all this about this test person “Sarah Alaska”? I have to look at it every day, and I hate seeing it!”
I looked at her and said “Well, I kind of like seeing it, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of it.”
She gaped wide eyed at me, her mouth opened and closed like a landed fish, and she sputtered out in unfeigned horror: “You...you...you’re...you’re ONE of THEM!
I grinned with an evil grin, and said “Yes, I am!”
So this woman and I went out to dinner one night when we were involved in testing late into the evening, and while we were dining she said: “I know you feel differently about many things than I do...I don’t understand way. You seem intelligent (which was a high compliment coming from her, as I thought she was one of the brightest people professionally I had ever known) and I am curious as to why you feel this way about this subject. Can you explain it to me?”
So I said: “If you are willing to actually listen, not interrupt or cut me off (which I knew she wouldn’t) I can expand on it.”
And I did.
After I explained my views on economic freedom and personal freedom, how those two things were inextricably intertwined and could not be separated, and how the 2nd Amendment gave us the right to defend ourselves personally and those liberties among others, she just sat there and said: “Well, you sound like you have given it a lot of thought, and I have difficulty disagreeing with you.”
I haven’t talked to her in over a year now, but she was a logical, data-driven person, and I knew I connected with her on a logical and data driven basis. But I never connected on the emotional aspect of these things, and even though she couldn’t find it in herself to rebut my beliefs, I don’t believe she was ever able to change emotionally by embracing the logic. She just didn’t have it in her to do that.
It is that experience that has cemented the longstanding belief I have held that Liberalism is emotionally-based, and in even the intellectually strongest people, they may be unable or unwilling to allow logic and reason to overcome the emotional aspect of things in certain areas.
I regarded her as a “Liberal”, so in her case, I accept this may be true.
In the case of full-blown Leftists, it is something else altogether, an amalgam of arrogance, hatred, racism, sexism, ignorance, stupidity, greed (for power and control) all wrapped in a protective cloak of emotion that will not allow them to even question their beliefs.
And that is one of the main differences between “Us” (Conservatives) and “Them” (Liberals and Leftists): We engage in near constant introspection and examination of our beliefs, looking for the flaws in the foundations of our principles and the cracks in the edifices built on those foundations.
We have to, because we are told 24x7 by the Government, the Media, Entertainment, and Education, that we, as Conservatives, are not only flawed but Evil. So, we constantly examine and deconstruct our beliefs so we can ensure we are morally on the right track.
Leftists, except in rare cases, not only do not feel compelled to do this because they are validated 24x7 by the Government, the Media, Entertainment, and Education, but because they feel safety in the collective crowd of Leftists they occupy the same bubble with.