sorting and links

OK, I'm sure that the answers are extremely simple, but I'm having two problems. 1. How do I sort a list through PHP alphabetically? This is a drop-down menu full of part numbers and it's a pain in the neck to search for the right one through about a thousand of them. Currently, the sort (or lack thereof) is based on a primary key code (which other aspects of the database are based on), and sorts it based on the number. This is not user-friendly, and an alphabetical sort would make it much more so (this is very important). 2. There is a button that deletes a row from a table in my database. What I need is for the button to delete the row and then return the user to the previous page. Can it do both of these things? This again, is part of the necessity for a user-friendly environment. Any ideas or places to look for more info would be great. I have several reference books, but they're not much help if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. This is MySQL version 3.23.29a-gamma and PHP 4.0.4 with Apache 1.3 on a Win2K Pro machine. Thanks, Liz