How to Order Data in Excel

Organizing raw data is the crucial first step toward uncovering valuable insights, and knowing how to order information in Excel is a fundamental skill for anyone working with spreadsheets. This guide will walk you through everything from a simple one-click sort to more advanced multi-level and custom ordering. You will learn how to arrange your data exactly how you need it to prepare it for analysis, reporting, or charting.

Why Sorting Data in Excel is So Important

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Properly ordered data is much easier to work with. Sorting allows you to:

• Quickly find information: Alphabetically sorting a customer list makes it easy to locate a specific person's record.
• Identify trends and patterns: Ordering sales data from highest to lowest instantly reveals your top-performing products or regions.
• Group related items: Sorting by category brings all similar items together, making subtotal calculations or comparisons simple.
• Prepare data for other tools: Well-organized data is essential for creating accurate charts, PivotTables, and summary reports.

In Excel, you can sort data in two main directions:

• Ascending Order: Arranges text from A to Z, numbers from smallest to largest, and dates from oldest to newest.
• Descending Order: Arranges text from Z to A, numbers from largest to smallest, and dates from newest to oldest.

How to Use Quick Sort for Simple Organization

For most day-to-day tasks, you only need to sort your data by a single column. Excel's Quick Sort feature is perfect for this, allowing you to organize your entire table with just two clicks.

Follow these steps:

1. Click on any single cell within the column you wish to sort by. For instance, if you want to sort your data by "Last Name," click any last name in that column. You do not need to highlight the whole column or table.
2. Navigate to the Data tab in the Excel ribbon.
3. In the "Sort & Filter" group, you will see two icons:

Excel will automatically detect your entire data range and sort all rows accordingly, keeping all the information in each row together. A common mistake is to select an entire column by itself, if you do this, Excel will ask if you want to "expand the selection." Always choose this option to avoid scrambling your data by sorting one column independently of the others.

Example: You have a table of sales transactions. To see the largest sales first, simply click any cell in the "Sale Amount" column and click the ZA ↓ button. The whole table will instantly reorder itself to show the top sales at the top.

Using the Sort Dialog Box for Multi-Level Sorting

Sometimes sorting by a single column isn't enough. You might need to sort by region, then by salesperson within each region, and then by sale amount. This is called a multi-level sort, and it's easily done using the Sort dialog box.

Here's how to create a multi-level sort:

1. Click anywhere inside your data set.
2. Go to the Data tab and click the large Sort button (the one with the funnel and AZ icon).
3. The Sort dialog box will open. At the top right, make sure the box for "My data has headers" is checked if your columns have titles. This tells Excel to exclude the top row from the sorting process.
4. Under the "Column" heading, use the "Sort by" dropdown to choose your first sorting level. For example, you might select "Region."
5. Under "Sort On," you can typically leave it as "Cell Values."
6. Under "Order," choose your desired direction (e.g., "A to Z").
7. To add your second sorting level, click the "Add Level" button in the top left. A new row will appear.
8. For this "Then by" row, select another column, like "Sales Rep." Choose your preferred sort order. Now, your data will be sorted primarily by region, and within each identical region, it will be sorted by Sales Rep name.
9. You can continue clicking "Add Level" to add more sorting criteria as needed. To remove a level, select it and click "Delete Level." To change the priority, select a level and use the "Move Up" or "Move Down" arrows.
10. Once you've set up your sorting rules, click OK.

How to Sort Data from Left to Right (Horizontal Sort)

Most of the time, data is organized in columns. But what if your table is set up with categories in rows and data extending horizontally? Excel allows you to sort columns based on the values in a specific row.

Let's say you have monthly sales data where each month is a column. You can sort these columns chronologically or based on the sales figures in a particular row.

1. Select the entire range of data you want to sort horizontally.
2. Go to the Data tab and click the Sort button.
3. In the Sort dialog box, click on the Options... button.
4. A small "Sort Options" window will appear. Select "Sort left to right" and click OK.
5. The main dialog box will now look different. Instead of "Column," it will say "Row." In the "Sort by" dropdown, select the row you want to base the sort on (e.g., "Row 1" if your month names are there, or "Row 5" if you want to sort by that row's sales data).
6. Choose your sort order (e.g., "Smallest to Largest" for sales figures) and click OK.

Your columns will now be reordered from left to right based on your rule.

Creating a Custom Sort Order

What if you need to sort by something that isn’t alphabetical or numerical? For instance, you might need to order project tasks by a specific priority: "High," "Medium," then "Low." Or perhaps you sort clothing sizes in a logical way ("Small," "Medium," "Large," "X-Large") rather than alphabetically.

For these situations, you can create a custom sort list.

1. Navigate to the Data tab and click the Sort button.
2. In the dialog box, under "Sort by," select the column that contains the values you want to sort, like "Priority."
3. In the "Order" dropdown menu on the far right, select "Custom List...".
4. The "Custom Lists" window will appear. On the left are built-in lists (like days of the week and months of the year). To create your own, ensure "NEW LIST" is selected.
5. In the "List entries" box on the right, type out your desired order. Press Enter after each entry. For our example, you would type:
6. Click the Add button. Your new custom list will appear in the box on the left.
7. Click OK. You'll be back in the main Sort dialog box, and your new list will be chosen as the sort order. Click OK again to apply the sort.

Sorting by Color or Conditional Formatting Icons

If you use conditional formatting to highlight cells—for instance, marking negative profits in red or top sales in green—you can also sort your data based on those visual cues.

1. Open the Sort dialog box from the Data tab.
2. Select the column containing the formatting as your "Sort by" column.
3. Click the "Sort On" dropdown and change it from "Cell Values" to "Cell Color," "Font Color," or "Cell Icon."
4. The "Order" dropdown will change, allowing you to select the specific color or icon you want to sort.
5. In the final dropdown, you can choose to place those formatted cells "On Top" or "On Bottom" of the list.
6. Click OK to apply. You can even use "Add Level" to create rules for multiple colors, for example, bringing all green cells to the top, followed by all yellow cells.

Final Thoughts

Mastering a few simple sorting techniques in Excel can dramatically speed up your data analysis workflow. From quick alphabetical lists to complex sorting by multiple levels and even custom criteria like cell color, ordering your data properly sets the stage for clearer charts, faster lookups, and more meaningful reports.

While organizing data manually in Excel and Google Sheets is powerful, we know that the work doesn't stop there. Much of the time spent on reporting is actually just wrangling and preparing data from different sources before you can analyze it. At Graphed , we automate the tedious parts by connecting directly to your marketing and sales platforms – like Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook Ads, and Salesforce. Instead of exporting CSVs and manually sorting data, you can create real-time, self-updating dashboards by simply describing what you want to see.