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microsoft.excel.training - Sorting the data

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Fazil has attended:
Excel Advanced course

Sorting the data

Hello,

My question is not 'just sorting' the data. I know to do that by Data - Sort and also by Filtering data.

In my data base, information is stored month-wise. It is easy for me find all the data of any particular month by just 'sorting' them. The problem is thay are not in order. Example, there will be an April data and after that a March followed my a May data.

So, when I need a print out of all the data in month order, it is not possible. When I fliter and sort them, it does 'ascending' or 'descending' and neither of them gets the months in order.

I want to know how I could sort all the data in proper month order, starting from January and ending with December.

Could you help..?

Thanks and regards,
Fazil

RE: Sorting the data

Hi Fazil

It sounds like the dates you are sorting are not in DATE format otherwise if you sorted dates they would be in order from 1 Jan to 31 Dec.

If your dates have been entered as text eg.

"Jan 07"
"Mar 07" (Note the " indicates it was entered, or its formatted as text
"Apr 07"

and you sort them they will be in Alphabetical order.

If this is true you need to reformat your dates before sorting

Hope this helps

Regards

Carlos

RE: Sorting the data

Hi Carlos,

Thanks for your quick reply. Yes, the data is entered just with the month (eg: May, June etc)

And the data is entered by lots of people from different departments.

Isn't there anyway I could get it sorted from January running to December without any change in the current data format.

Thanks and regards,
Fazil

RE: Sorting the data

Fazil

The simple answer is No. Text will always sort A, B,C etc

The only way to get around it would be to either enter the months as

1 Jan
2 Feb
3 Mar
etc

Or add another column with these numbers and sort it by that.

Regards

Carlos

RE: Sorting the data

Thanks Carlos.

RE: Sorting the data

Extra to that, instead of having to type in a number for every single row, you could create a table in a different sheet and link the data using vlookup

in a different sheet, create a table that has numbers 1-12 in rows and in the cells next to them type Jan Feb Mar etc

then you can insert a column in your main table and say =vlookup(B2,Sheet2!A:B,2,0) then drag the formula down the column

that'd save you typing in all the numbers loads of times if you have thousands of entries

Excel tip:

Hiding and unhiding columns using the keyboard

CTRL + 0 hides your columns and CTRL + SHIFT + ) unhides them although you would need to highlight the column letters either side as per normal

View all Excel hints and tips

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