Editing class order in a layer in Esri Maps for Office

[MichaelGilbrook]

I am using Esri Maps for Office 3.0 under Windows 7, 64-bit and Microsoft Office 2010. I have an Excel spreadsheet that lists counties in Florida and provides a Status for each county (e.g., "3. Field Review Underway," "4. QC Complete"). Each status value is preceded by a number so that when they are sorted they sort in the workflow order, and not alphabetically. When I create a map layer from the spreadsheet the Status values show up in random order (see attached screenshot). I have tried this several times, and gotten a different order each time. I have two questions:

1. Is there a way to ensure that the class values in the layer are created in the correct sort order from the beginning? If not...
2. Is there a way to change the order of the class values in a layer so that I can order them numerically (1, 2, 3, etc.)?

I had previously used this spreadsheet and earlier versions of Esri Maps for Office to create my map and publish it to ArcGIS Online with no problems. The sort order for the classes in the map layer always appeared in the correct numeric sort order, so this was never an issue before.

Thanks for any and all assistance!

Michael