I am trying to sort a VBA dictionary with the following keys and values. It is sorting the keys alphabetically. What I want is for it to treat the keys as "MMM-DD" format and sort. Is it possible? How do I make array list convert the keys to a date format (MMM-DD)?

May-1  12
Jan-21 14 
Dec-6  11
Feb-24 15 

This is the code

Sub TestSortByKey()

    Dim dict As Object
    Set dict = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
    
    dict.Add "May-1", 12
    dict.Add "Jan-21", 14
    dict.Add "Dec-6", 11
    dict.Add "Feb-24", 15
     
    ' Sort Ascending
    Set dict = SortDictionaryByKey(dict)
    PrintDictionary "Key Ascending", dict 
End Sub

Public Function SortDictionaryByKey(dict As Object, Optional sortorder As XlSortOrder = xlAscending) As Object
    
    Dim arrList As Object      
    Dim key As Variant, coll As New Collection
    Dim dictNew As Object
    Set arrList = CreateObject("System.Collections.ArrayList")   
    For Each key In dict
        arrList.Add key
    Next key
     
    arrList.Sort
     
    If sortorder = xlDescending Then
        arrList.Reverse
    End If
     
    
    Set dictNew = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
     
    For Each key In arrList
        dictNew.Add key, dict(key)
    Next key
     
    Set arrList = Nothing
    Set dict = Nothing     
    Set SortDictionaryByKey = dictNew
        
End Function

Public Sub PrintDictionary(ByVal sText As String, dict As Object)        
    Debug.Print vbCrLf & sText & vbCrLf & String(Len(sText), "=")        
    Dim key As Variant
    For Each key In dict.Keys
        Debug.Print key, dict(key)
    Next
End Sub

>Solution :

When adding to the dictionary convert the keys from text to Date using the CDate function should fix the sorting issue.

Sub TestSortByKey()

    Dim dict As Object
    Set dict = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
    
    dict.Add CDate("May-1"), 12
    dict.Add Cdate("Jan-21"), 14
    dict.Add CDate("Dec-6"), 11
    dict.Add CDate("Feb-24"), 15
     
    ' Sort Ascending
    Set dict = SortDictionaryByKey(dict)
    PrintDictionary "Key Ascending", dict 
End Sub