Click the “Sort by” dropdown arrow and select the Classification column.Excel automatically detects the dataset to be sorted and displays the Sort dialog box on the screen.Go to the Data tab on the ribbon and click on the “Sort” command.We may want to apply multi-level sorting by first separating books into fiction versus nonfiction, and then alphabetically by the author’s name. If we wanted to sort alphabetically by multiple columns, the “ Sort” command is a much better option, as it gives us more options and more control over how our data is sorted. Of course, we can sort by any column we want to by using the “A-Z” icon, but this only allows us to sort by one column at a time. Sort alphabetically by multiple columnsįor example, some datasets have several columns with different potential sorting categories, like the database of books in the image below. Sometimes though, the dataset to be sorted is some variation of the above conditions, so the “A to Z” or “Z to A” icon won’t do. In this case, these assumptions were all correct, so everything worked out well. Columns A and B are elements of a single dataset, so rows should be kept together when a column is sorted.Row 1 is a header row and should not be sorted with the list of names.These two “quick-sort” methods work well on this dataset because Excel made the following assumptions: To remove the filter dropdown arrows, click on the Filter icon again.īoth the Sort and Filter options are also accessible from the Home tab by using a dropdown menu and selecting their respective icons. If the list had been sorted from Z to A, the arrow would have been shown in the opposite direction. The dataset is sorted with the same results as the previous method and shows a tiny arrow next to the Column A dropdown arrow. Step 3 - Click the dropdown arrow list on the Last Name header, and select the Sort A to Z command from the context menu. Step 1 - Click on a cell in the column you want to sort by. Of course, you can also see that there is an option to sort in descending order by using the “Z-A” sort icon instead.Īn alternative to the above method is to use the Filter command, also on the Data tab. The last names will be sorted alphabetically in ascending order by the column of your active cell. Step 2 - Go to the Data tab and click this icon: Notice that A4 is our active cell in the above example. The absolute quickest way to alphabetize columns in Excel is to use the “A to Z” icon on the Data tab. Using the data set below as a sample, we would probably want to alphabetize by last name using Column A. Alphabetize columns in Excel Method 1 - Using the A-Z icon Since Excel is all about handling and organizing data, it’s no surprise that this is one of the built-in tasks it handles really well. This is because it uses a standard system (the alphabet) to arrange items, so there is an accepted location for each item on the list. Placing items in alphabetical order is one of the most common ways of organizing data.
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