Hi George,
Roger told you what to do.   As for the reason, you pretty much nailed
that yourself.    Excel will choose the Current Region (Ctrl+Shift+*)
if you have a single cell selected.

You will find the definition of "current region"  in the definition of the shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+*   (within topic "Select cells with specific characteristics")

Ctrl+Shift+*   (asterisk)
Select the current region around the active cell (the data area enclosed by blank rows and blank columns). In a PivotTable report,
select the entire PivotTable report.

More information on sorting on my   sorting.htm   web page.

Apparently you were deleting the content of a row or column,
but not the entire row or column.   Anyway as Roger said to the
selection yourself,   before invoking the sort.    Or risk losing the
integrity of your data.     You can use the gray button between
the row numbers and column letters,  or before Excel 2003 you
can use Ctrl+A.    With Excel 2003 it becomes more complicated.
  http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/shortx2k.htm#foobar

HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel    [site changed  Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages:  http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page:        http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Roger Govier" <roger@technologyNOSPAM4u.co.uk> wrote l...