Create serial field following alphabetical order with QGIS?

Question

I have a field with names, a string field, and I want to create another one with serial content following the alphabetical order.

I have this:

--------
|Field1|
--------
|  B   |    
--------
|  C   |
--------
|  A   |
--------
|  D   |
--------

And I want to reach this:

-----------------
|Field1| Field2 |
-----------------
|  A   |    1   |
-----------------
|  B   |    2   |
-----------------
|  C   |    3   |
-----------------
|  D   |    4   |
-----------------

How can I reach it using the fiel calculator of QGIS?

Any idea???

Answer 1

The MMQGIS plugin offers a tool to sort Shapefiles. After sorting is completed, you can add the numerical values using field calculator $rownum operator.