Google is Glorious

Windows is wonderful, Linux is lovely, and now Google is glorious. Imported an Excel spreadsheet into Google Docs. I wanted to sort this spreadsheet according to the numbers in one particular column. Google sorted the sheet, but it did it alphabetically rather than numerically, i.e. all the numbers that started with 1, like 1, 10, 100, 1000, came first, and then all the numbers that started with 2, and so on. Not what I wanted. Fine.

Clear the formatting (using the Clear Formatting command under the Edit menu). Try again. No help. Muck around with this that and the other and get nowhere. Finally post a question on the help forum. Shortly I got an answer back: the problem is Google thinks the column contains text. Never mind that it actually contains numbers. Google is convinced it contains text and nothing is going to change it's little mind.

The solution is to add a column and then multiply the values in first column by one and store them in the second column. Shazam! It works! What a crock. If you want to multiply, it will treat the value like a number, but if you want to sort, Google will insist it is text, even if you tell it is not?!? Stupid Google. Oh, wait. I forgot, Google is glorious.