Okay, it's weird but it's still happening. Org-mode 9.1.5 as above. Hmmm, if I kill the buffer and reopen it, its sorts itself

Here's the header settings

#+STARTUP:              showall
#+LANGUAGE:             en
#+OPTIONS:              H:2 num:nil toc:nil \n:nil
#+OPTIONS:              TeX:t LaTeX:t skip:nil d:nil todo:t pri:nil tags:not-in-toc
#+INFOJS_OPT:           view:nil toc:nil ltoc:t mouse:underline buttons:0 path:https://orgmode.org/org-info.js
#+EXPORT_SELECT_TAGS:   export
#+EXPORT_EXCLUDE_TAGS:  noexport


actual text C&P from org buffer


| date     | task                                  | time |   |   |
|----------+---------------------------------------+------+---+---|
| 19/07/12 | admin stuff -- slack, trello, backlog |    3 |   |   |
| 19/07/16 | meeting. followup.                    |  2.5 |   |   |
|          |                                       |      |   |   |

screen shot



On Sat, Aug 3, 2019 at 2:58 PM Charles R (Charlie) Martin <chasrmartin@gmail.com> wrote:
I've got Org mode version 9.1.5 (9.1.5-1-gb3ddb0-elpa 


On Sat, Aug 3, 2019 at 2:24 PM John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
This looks like an old org bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

John

-----------------------------------
Professor John Kitchin 
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803


On Sat, Aug 3, 2019 at 3:06 PM Neil Jerram <neiljerram@gmail.com> wrote:
I just tried this with

Org mode version 9.1.5 (release_9.1.5-1784-g772949 @ /home/neil/src/org-mode/lisp/)

and I don't see the problem with that version.  What version do you have?


On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 at 19:48, Charles R (Charlie) Martin <chasrmartin@gmail.com> wrote:
This seems like an unlikely bug because it's very basic to org-mode tables, but if I'm doing something wrong I sure can't figure out what.

I have this table:

| Date                   | Count | Pages |
|------------------------+-------+-------|
| 2019-Aug-03 (Sat, 215) | 2069  |     7 |
|                        |       |       |

but when I hit TAB or C-c C-c to reformat the table it is displayed as in the screenshot

Screenshot 2019-08-03 12.44.51.png
 
Copying the text with M-w is still the same.

| Date                   | Count | Pages |
|------------------------+-------+-------|
| 2019-Aug-03 (Sat, 215) |  2069 |     7 |
|                        |       |       |

I'm immensely puzzled.

Signed 
Immensely puzzled