Tip #15 - Sorting in Excel

100 Computer Tips in 100 Days

Tip #15 - Sorting in Excel

People love to use Excel to make lists. Lists of names, products, sales, you name it, someone has kept a list of it in Excel. The row/column structure in Excel makes it an excellent choice for these lists. When setting up a list it is important that you do not leave any blank rows or columns within your list. In other words, don’t skip a few rows because you want to break the information apart by department or date or anything else. These blank rows or columns will make it difficult for you to sort or filter the information in your lists. It’s fine to have information missing within a row or column but entirely blank rows and columns are a big no-no.

Once you have checked to make sure there are no blank columns and rows you’re almost ready to sort. Before you sort, you should take a minute to format the header row, usually row 1, by clicking the row heading (row number) and choosing a format from the Home tab in the Font group. I like making that row bold and centered. This step identifies for Excel that row 1 should not be sorted into the information in that column. It’s really annoying to see the row label “first name” in the “f” section of names. If that happens use the undo button (Ctrl + z).

Now you’re all set to click on a cell in the column you want to sort by and then click the Sort and Filter option on the Home tab in the Editing group. You can choose to sort ascending or descending. This will be represented by the A-Z button or Z-A button. Older versions of Excel have the Sort command in the Data menu. Custom sort will bring up a dialog box so you can identify other types of sorts or a series of sorts.

The Sort command is on the Home tab as well as the Data tab.

You’ll notice that when you do a second sort the first sort will be retained as much as possible. If you wanted the list in the screen shot on this page sorted by grade and within the grade groups by last name, you would sort the last name column and then sort the grade column. 

Happy Computing! See you tomorrow. - Diane