How to Make a Sorted List on Excel
Microsoft Excel gives you the ability to sort a spreadsheet in seconds -- even if it contains data in thousands of cells. Using the sorting options, you can quickly take an earnings sheet and learn when your business earned the most money or sort a list of names alphabetically. If you have a complex spreadsheet, use the custom sorting option to sort it according to multiple criteria.
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Instructions
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1
Start Excel 2010 using the shortcut in the Microsoft Office folder, and open the spreadsheet containing data that you want to sort.
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2
Click the button between the "A" and "1" in the upper-left corner of the window to highlight all of the data in the spreadsheet. Alternatively, click and drag the mouse pointer across the letters at the top of the window to highlight only certain columns. If you do this, the data in the columns not highlighted remains in its current location after sorting.
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3
Click the "Home" tab at the top of the window.
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4
Click the "Sort & Filter" button in the "Editing" section of the top toolbar, and then click an option such as "Sort A to Z," "Sort Smallest to Largest" or "Sort Oldest to Newest" to sort the data automatically. The options available are context-sensitive and vary depending on the leftmost column selected. To sort by multiple columns, select "Custom Sort" and continue.
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5
Click the drop-down menu next to "Sort by," and select the first column that you want to use for sorting.
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6
Click the drop-down menu under "Order," and select the sort order for the selected column such as "Oldest to Newest."
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7
Click the "Add Level" button to add an additional column to the sorting criteria, and then repeat steps 5 and 6. If multiple rows have matching information in the first selected column, Excel sorts them according to the second column selected. You can add as many columns to the sorting criteria as you like.
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Click "OK" to sort the data according to the criteria you selected.
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