Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
when you have a lot of different Reds in
your spreadsheet you may want to sort
the data so you can view it more easily
sorting can reorder things
alphabetically numerically by date or
even in a custom order that you choose
depending on your preference you can
either sort from the Home tab using the
sort and filter drop-down menu or you
can use the commands in the data tab in
this example I have a worksheet with a
list of t-shirt orders and I'd like to
sort it alphabetically by last name just
click any cell in the column you want to
sort and then click the ascending
command that's the one that says a to Z
you'll notice that when we sort one
column Excel also reorders the other
columns so that each row still has the
correct information
if we wanted these in reverse order we
could click the descending command
that's the one that says z2 eh
now this method doesn't always work if
your spreadsheet has an unusual layout
watch what happens when I try to sort
the data here on the right
see how the header row is in created in
the sort by mistake in a situation like
this you might need to manually select
the cells you want instead of relying on
Excel to do it for you this is called
sorting a cell range select the cell
range you want to store including the
header row if you have one then click
the sort command and a dialog box will
appear and first you'll want to check
the box that says my data has headers
then use the drop down menu on the left
to choose the column you want to sort by
then select a sorting order in this
example we'll choose largest to smallest
when you're done click OK and the range
will be sorted by the selected column
notice that the rest of the worksheet
wasn't affected by our sort now
sometimes the default sorting options
won't work for what you have in mind for
example if we sort the columns that
contain the t-shirt sizes in ascending
order the order will be large medium
small then extra large because the
column is being sorted alphabetically
you know would be better if the sizes
were listed in a more logical order
in other words small medium large then
extra large for this we'll need to
create a custom sort to begin click the
sort command and on the right you can
see that it's ordering the column from A
to Z if we click this drop-down menu and
select custom list we can enter the
t-shirt sizes in the order we want so
I'll click in the box and start typing
small medium large and extra-large and
I'm pressing enter after each one when
you done with your list click the Add
button
make sure that your list is selected
over here on the left then click OK to
confirm and ok again and now the
worksheet is sorted the way we want the
only problem with this is that every
other column is completely out of order
what I would really like is if the
homeroom numbers were organized within
each t-shirt size I can do this by
sorting by multiple levels this will let
us sort first by t-shirt size and then
by homeroom click the sort command and
you'll notice the different options at
the top of the dialog box
you can add a level to the sort the
leader level or even use the arrows to
change the level order
in this example we want to add a level
now we just have to select the homeroom
column and we'll leave the other two
fields the way they are sorting the
values from smallest to largest and when
you click OK you'll see that within each
t-shirt size the homeroom numbers are
listed in numerical order as you can see
there are a lot of different ways of
sorting your data depending on how you
want to organize it so take some time to
experiment with the different options
and find the ones that best suit your
needs