Sorting data in Excel
Sorting is a way of arranging the data in a sequence. For example, you may want to arrange names of employees alphabetically or arrange their salaries from lowest to highest etc.
Sorting depends on the type of data being sorted.
For example, you can sort :
- Text data alphabetically, i.e. A -> Z or Z -> A
- Numbers from smallest to largest or largest to smallest
- Dates from oldest to newest or newest to oldest
Sort a single column in Excel
Sorting a single column can be achieved by just clicking either of the following icons on Data tab:
(Sort A to Z for Text or smallest to largest for Numbers or oldest to newest for Date/Time)
(Sort Z to A for Text or largest to smallest for Numbers or newest to oldest for Date/Time)
To explain this, we will use the following data :
It has Student names in column A which is Text and marks in column C which are numbers.
Following example will sort one column at a time :
Example 1 : (Sort data in ascending order of student names)
Step1 : Select the column that you want to sort.
Since we want to sort by student names, click on any cell in column A.
Step 2: Choose the type of sort from Data tab.
We can do one of the following :
Option 1 :
Click on the icon in the Data tab. It will sort the data with student names sorted alphabetically.
Here is how the sorted data looks like :
Note that, the Student Names have been sorted alphabetically.
Option 2 :
Click on the 
icon in Data tab. It will open the following dialog box.
Click OK… It will sort the student names alphabetically
Example 2 : (Sort marks from highest to lowest)
Click on any cells in column C and Click on the icon in the Data tab.
It will sort the marks from highest to lowest.
Here is the data with marks sorted :
Sort Data on multiple columns in Excel
Data can be sorted based on multiple columns using the Sort icon in Data tab.
Here are the steps for the same :
1- Click on any cell in the range of cells you want to sort.
2- Click on the sort icon in Data tab.
3- In the sort dialog box, add the different levels you want to sort .
4- click OK to sort the data.
Example : (Sort based on Student name alphabetically and marks in descending)
In this example, we will sort the student data(from previous example), by student name alphabetically and then by marks in descending order.
For this, click on the sort icon in Data tab and add the sort levels shown below :
click OK to sort the data
Here is how the data will look like after being sorted on Student Name alphabetically and marks in descending order.
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