Sorting a list or set of information can be straightforward or more complex. In Excel, you can sort with the menu or the SORT function. This post is about sorting in a table or range. For the new SORT function, have a look at our post called Excel Sort Function.

Why would you want to sort? It allows you to quickly spot trends in your data. It allows you to see the maximum or minimum values. Sorting data helps you quickly visualize and understand your data better, organize and find the data that you want, and ultimately make more effective decisions.

Potential Issues of Unclean Data

If your data is not clean, you may get unexpected results. For example, if your data format is not consistent in a column you want to sort, it will not be sorted correctly. If a column has numbers stores as both numbers and text, sorting will produce unexpected results. In another example, if a column of tet has leading spaces for some of its values, sorting will produce unexpected results. Have a look at the TRIM function.

Microsoft 365 Support

At Microsoft there is an article on sorting called Sort data in a range or table. At that page, there are 11 different use cases of using sort. They are: Sort text, Sort dates or times, sort by more than one column or row, Sort by cell color font color or icon, Sort by custom list, Case sensitive sort, Sort from left to right, Sort by a partial value in a column, Sort a range within a larger range, Learn more about general issues with sorting.

Learn with YouTube

Here is a YouTube video called Excel: Sorting Data by GCFLearnFree.org. Notice that in the video he creates a customer list: small, medium, large and x-large. In this way, he can sort properly, not alphabetically. Compare custom lists to R language levels.