juddz

Thanks John, I was afraid that was going to be the solution. Don't seem like it oughtta be that way, though. The good news is that your excellent utilities will handle the conversion.

I did the maintenance routines you suggested and Validate fixed 1972 "possible problems" but the Expanded Picklist sort wasn't one of them. However, after futzing around for a while, I think I found the problem but the solution eludes me. It seems all the names with a leading space use a custom name style I use for Dutch names: [PreSurname] [sortSurname], [sortGiven] [suffix] [Title] If the PreSurname is filled in (e.g. van, van der, etc), the name sorts correctly. Apparently, if the PreSurname is blank, a space is inserted at the front of the name and it sorts to the top of the list. I considered making PreSurname a conditional field and surrounding it with <> but Help says that conditional fields are not needed in name styles. Any thoughts?

Thanks to you both. That's 2 votes for "paste unformatted". I'll try it and see how it goes. Now, does anyone know a way to do a mass correction on all the names that have a leading space? I'm not looking forward to correcting them one by one. But .... oh, well.

Thanks for your reply. When I paste data, I do a <Ctl-A> (select all), then <delete>, then <paste>. After pasting I do <home>, then <right arrow> to check if there is a leading space. If there is a space, I delete it.

The Expanded Picklist is sorted on Person Name (last name, first name). It sorts in to 2 sections; both sequenced correctly. I believe the reason is that some surnames have a leading space even though I am very careful not to enter one when entering a surname. I have noticed, though, that this may be happening when I paste the surname from another electronic document or web site. And, no, I'm not pasting a leading space. Is there a way to prevent this or at least repair it globally. Another curious thing about the Expanded Picklist is that the Person Name, Mother's Name, and Spouse's Name columns are last name, first name but the Father's Name is first name, last name. This isn't a big deal but if there is a quick fix, I'd like to have it.