Thanks Jack, my problem may not be fixable. I'm writing a db for grocery shopping. Most items are in numbered isles but some are in Dairy or Meat or Produce. Thanks for your help and any new ideas you have to fix my problem.
If your field contains data like Dairy in one record 2 in another 7 in another then you can add a column to your query and put this in the first line
Sort: Val([NameOfYourFieldWithNumbersAndText])
Set the sort to Ascending and you will get the words and then the numbers in numerical order. Uncheck the Show box if you do not want to see this column.