Sorting

Quick reference

• 00:05 In this video we're going to look at sorting data in Excel.
• 00:09 You can see that I have some data here that is already ready to be sorted.
• 00:14 And when I say already ready,
• 00:15 there's some keys here that I want you to recognize about this data.
• 00:19 Number one, it's in a good, tabular format right off the bat.
• 00:23 And by that I mean it looks like a table.
• 00:25 It's all set up,
• 00:25 it's got some nice consistent data types down the individual columns.
• 00:29 We've got text down here and numbers and percentages and more values over here.
• 00:33 There's no blank rows and there's no blank columns anywhere in the data.
• 00:38 And that's really important because when Excel tries to sort, it's going to try and
• 00:43 say, where is the data range?
• 00:44 And it looks until it finds the first blank row or blank column.
• 00:48 And at that point, it stops looking anymore and says,
• 00:51 this is the data you want sorted.
• 00:52 Now, you can override that, but ultimately, you shouldn't want to.
• 00:57 The next thing is, is that has a nice header row and
• 00:59 while this is not essential for your data source, it's certainly makes it easier.
• 01:04 And we'll show you why as we go through here.
• 01:07 So first thing is let's do a single level sort
• 01:11 which is sorting the credit cards in ascending order by name.
• 01:15 We've got a couple of different places we can do this.
• 01:17 We can go to Sort and Filter and we can use the Sort A-Z right here.
• 01:22 Or we could do the same thing by going to the Data Tab, and
• 01:25 we've got the buttons in this particular area as well.
• 01:28 So, when we click sort, you'll notice that it did not sort the headers into the data,
• 01:32 it recognizes those as headers.
• 01:34 We could flip this around and go with our Visas first and then our MasterCards,
• 01:39 going Z to A.
• 01:42 But what if we wanted to sort these, and
• 01:45 say you know I'd really rather actually go and sort this by the maximum balance?
• 01:49 Well that's no problem, I'll click in the maximum balance column, and
• 01:52 I'll click to sort, set to A here.
• 01:55 So it resorts all of the columns here.
• 01:58 Now, within this though, I would actually like to go and
• 02:02 start sorting this differently.
• 02:03 Because right now I've got this sorted in descending order.
• 02:07 But when you look at ties in this case,
• 02:11 they're also sorted in descending order and I'd like to change that.
• 02:14 So I wanna set up a multiple level sort here.
• 02:17 The way we do it, is we click anywhere inside our data, and
• 02:21 we click the sort button.
• 02:23 And this will allow us, and this is why header rows are very useful,
• 02:27 is that it picks off that header row right off the bat.
• 02:29 Now if you have a header row, and for whatever reason,
• 02:31 Excel doesn't recognize it.
• 02:33 That's why you can check this little box on the side here that says my data has
• 02:36 headers.
• 02:37 So what we're gonna do is we're first gonna sort by the maximum balance
• 02:41 on values and we'll go largest to smallest.
• 02:43 And then what we'll do is say add level.
• 02:46 And when we add a level, we've got a new sort level that we can work with to say,
• 02:51 give me the credit card, and sort this one from A to Z.
• 02:56 And then, if I had a tie with credit cards, maybe I could say, you know what,
• 02:59 and then sort it by the annual interest rate,
• 03:03 from the largest to the smallest, so that I know which cards are there.
• 03:07 This isn't going to be a case in this particular set,
• 03:09 but when we actually go and say, okay now.
• 03:12 You'll notice that It's sorted by maximum balance,
• 03:15 descending, within ties, were sorted in ascending order.
• 03:20 So once again, here's another tie, it's ascending order with the M's first, and
• 03:24 the V's second.
• 03:25 So, this is kinda nice.
• 03:26 We've got the ability to go in and set up our sorts any way we want.
• 03:31 When you leave the table, if you come back into your table, and
• 03:34 you click sort again, you'll see that it preserves those levels.
• 03:37 If you wanna get rid of one or move them around,
• 03:39 let's say we wanted to sort by the credit card first.
• 03:43 We could select it and we could say, move up.
• 03:46 If we want to get rid of a level, we select it and we can say, delete level and
• 03:50 the level goes away.
• 03:51 You'll also want to know that we're not restricted to sorting just on
• 03:55 the values either.
• 03:56 If you notice, we can sort based on cell colors or
• 03:59 font colors even cell icons if we happen to have icons in the cells as well.
• 04:04 So that's pretty powerful stuff not being restricted to just dealing with text.
• 04:08 So I hope you enjoy that.
• 04:10 That is the different options we have for sorting data in Excel.

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