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when you have a lot of different rows 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 by color 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 select any cell in the
column that you want to sort and then
click the ascending command it's the one
that says a to Z you'll notice that when
you 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 the one that says
Z to a now this method doesn't always
work if your worksheet has an unusual
layout watch what happens when I try to
sort the data here on the right the
header row is included in the sorting
area by mistake in a situation like this
you might need to manually select the
cells you want instead of relying on
Excel this is called sorting a cell
range to get started select the range
you want to sort including the header
row if you have one then click the sort
command and a dialog box will appear 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 the sort sometimes
the default sorting options won't work
for what you have in mind
for example if we sort the column that
contains the t-shirt sizes in ascending
order the order will be large medium
small than extra-large because the
column is being sorted alphabetically it
would be better if the sizes were listed
in a more logical order
in other words small medium large than
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
that we want so I'll click the box and
start typing small medium large and
extra-large and I'm pressing enter after
each one then 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 ordered the way that we
want
the only problem with this is that every
other column is completely out of order
what I would really like is that the
homeroom numbers were more organized
within each size I can do this by
sorting multiple levels this will let us
sort first by t-shirt size and then by
homeroom
click the sort command then click the
button that says add level and 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 when you click OK
you'll see that within each t-shirt size
the homeroom numbers are listed in
numerical order if we wanted to sort by
homeroom first and then by t-shirt size
we could go back to the sort dialog box
select one of these rows and then use
the arrows to change the order to get
the results you want sometimes you need
to create multiple levels or incorporate
different types of custom sorting let's
take a look at one more example you may
have noticed that some of the cells in
this column are colored red indicating
that there's a problem with the students
payment we can make sure that these
appear at the top if we sort the
worksheet by cell formatting to do this
click the sort command again I want to
continue using the sort options that
we've just set up so I'm going to add a
new level for the payment method column
I'm also going to move it to the top of
the list so that sort happens first to
sort by cell formatting go to the drop
down menu under sort on here in addition
to values you can choose cell color font
color or cell icon next make your
selections in the order field depending
on what you have in mind in this example
we want all the red cells to appear on
top when you're ready click OK now we
can easily see which orders still have
outstanding payments 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 to find the ones that
best suit your needs
you