Excel Tutorials: How to Sort Data in Excel 2007

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Excel's sort feature is a quick and easy way to sort data in a spreadsheet. The options for sorting your data include:

• Sort in ascending order - A to Z alphabetically or smallest to largest for number data.
  
  
• Sort in descending order - Z to A alphabetically or largest to smallest for number data.
  
  
• Custom sort - includes sorting by the cell background color or the font color of the data.

Example: Sort Data in Excel 2007

Note: For help with this example, see the image above.

1. Enter the following data into cells A1 to A6: 40, 20, 30, 60, 5, 25.


2. Drag select cells A1 to A6 to highlight them.


3. Click on the Home tab of the ribbon.


4. Click on the Sort & Filter icon on the ribbon to open the drop down list.


5. Click on Sort smallest to largest.


6. The data in cells A1 to A6 should now be in this order:
   
   5, 20, 25, 30, 40, 60.

Note: Excel knows the difference between text and number data and adjust the options in the drop down list accordingly. For example, if cells A1 to A6 contained text - such as words or letters of the alphabet - instead of numbers the options in the Sort & Filter drop down list would change to Sort A to Z instead of Sort smallest to largest .
Also Note: If you have multiple columns of related data and you wish to perform a simple sort on one of those columns - such as sorting an address list by the person's last name - remember to select all columns of related data before carrying out the sort in order to keep your data together.