MATLAB: How to convert a letter to a number in a cell array? Number = alphabetical order location. i.e. A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc.

alphabetical to numericalcell arraycountingordering

cell2mat(yourcellarray) - 'A' + 1

sort(a) where a is your cell array

Here is one way:

Build test data:

 >> c = {randi(10,1,3), randi(10,1,4),randi(10,1,2),randi(10,1,3)}'
 c = 
    [1x3 double]
    [1x4 double]
    [1x2 double]
    [1x3 double]

Sort cells' content length, get indices of ordered lengths:

 >> [~,id] = sort( cellfun( @length, c ))
 id =
     3
     1
     4
     2

Use indices to sort original cell array:

 >> c = c(id)
 c = 
    [1x2 double]
    [1x3 double]
    [1x3 double]
    [1x4 double]