Sorting Data in Excel

Here are tutorial videos teaching how to sort in Excel. With only a few clicks you can choose to sort your data alphabetically in ascending (A to Z) or descending (Z to A) order, or by numerical value. See how you can arrange your data into groups, by sorting by more than one criteria. All with easy examples and by self practice spreadsheets.

Simple sorting Sorting by more than one criteria More sorting examples

Whenever you wish to rearrange the rows of a table in a useful and practical order.

For example: arranging a table of students by their last names in alphabetical order, or arranging a list of bank accounts by the account number.

You can also arrange by two or more criteria:
For example, Let’s assume you are a high school principal, and you have a list of all your pupils.
You might want to arrange your list and organize it by three categories:
First, by the different grades (in ascending order, from lower to higher), then within every grade by the different classes, and then within every class, by the pupil’s last name in alphabetical order.

Excel XP and 2003 allows you to sort by up to 3 different criteria, but from Excel 2007 it has been extended to up to 64 different criteria! But only on rare occasions you will need to use more than three. The need does arise when dealing with databases of thousands of records.