Sorting

Quick reference

• 00:00 In this video, we're gonna look at how to sort data in Excel.
• 00:08 Now, the big keys that you really wanna understand before you try and
• 00:11 sort data is it's really important to make sure that your data is already in
• 00:16 a tabular format.
• 00:17 So, something that looks a bit like a table like you see here.
• 00:20 And we need to make sure that there are no blank rows,
• 00:24 or columns interrupting the data that you want sorted.
• 00:27 So, a lot of users are tempted to put a blank
• 00:30 row between the header row of their table, and their actual data.
• 00:33 That's like absolute killer to most of Excel's advanced features.
• 00:37 So, you don't want to do that.
• 00:39 Now, what we're gonna do here,
• 00:41 is you can see we have what we call contiguous list of data.
• 00:43 So, there's no blank rows, no blank columns, and that's great.
• 00:46 While it's not essential, it is helpful to have a nice header row that's a little bit
• 00:50 different, and I'll show you why, in a second here.
• 00:53 Sorting is relatively straight forward.
• 00:55 Basically, we go to the Data tab, and you select the column that you want to sort
• 01:00 by, and you click the A to Z, or the Z to A icon.
• 01:04 So, if we wanted to sort by descending by Max Balance,
• 01:07 we could select any cell in that column, any cell at all.
• 01:11 We could sort by interest max, interest period.
• 01:14 This is how we do what we call single level sorts.
• 01:17 So basically, it sorts by one column, and
• 01:19 ignores all the rest of them and, and just sorts based on the column if selected.
• 01:23 But what if we wanna get a little bit more close ,and personal with our data, and
• 01:27 we actually want to sort on multiple levels?
• 01:31 To do that, we select any cell of data in the table, doesn't matter where.
• 01:36 And we're going to click the A-Z sort button, big one here.
• 01:40 And this allows us to actually go, and
• 01:42 get a little bit more technical with the way that we want our data sorted.
• 01:47 So, in this case right now, it's sorting by the Max Interest Per Period.
• 01:51 Well, we really don't want that.
• 01:52 Let's go, and sort by our Maximum balance.
• 01:57 How about that? We'll start there, and
• 01:59 we'll sort it from smallest to largest.
• 02:02 And if we want to add another level here, we could say, let's go,
• 02:06 and add this, and then, we'll sort it by the credit card.
• 02:10 And these are the headers that are showing up in my table here.
• 02:12 So, I'll sort my credit card, in, let's go from Z to A.
• 02:17 So, we'll go with the highest word,
• 02:19 the last alphabetical instance of this in order with our credit card, and say, okay.
• 02:25 So, you'll notice we sorted in ascending here but where we have ties,
• 02:30 it sorted the Visa above MasterCard.
• 02:34 And if I wanted to play around with this now, I could go back into my sort, and
• 02:37 I could change things out as well.
• 02:39 And say you know,
• 02:40 well actually this is actually drilled in a little bit deeper than I want here.
• 02:43 I'm gonna come back out, and that's because I selected a specific area.
• 02:46 I wanna select one cell.
• 02:48 So that it grabs the entire data range here.
• 02:51 And now I could change this, of course,
• 02:53 by going to something different if I wanted, as well.
• 02:55 You'll notice that we can sort based on values.
• 02:57 We can sort based on cell colors, font colors, cell icons as well.
• 03:01 So, there's a lot of robustness available in here, if you,
• 03:04 if you've got a huge table this can be very, very valuable.
• 03:07 The other thing that you wanna be aware of is,
• 03:09 if you wanna get rid of the sorting levels, all you need to do is just,
• 03:12 click the minus button here, and that will remove these levels again, and just say,
• 03:16 hey I'm not gonna bother setting up the sorts at this particular time.
• 03:19 You don't have to do that to clean it up there's no requirement there whatsoever,
• 03:23 but if you'd like to reset the way you're sorting because you want to do something
• 03:27 different you may want to go back in there and actually remove those levels there.
• 03:31 So, just remember when you're trying to add levels, if we go into sort we click
• 03:34 the plus button to add a new level, and we can click the minus button to make anyone
• 03:38 go away, so that is sorting in a nutshell inside excel

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