Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Inside Out

Sorting Lists and Other Ranges

Excel provides numerous ways to sort worksheet ranges. You can sort by columns or rows, in ascending or descending order, and with capitalization considered or ignored. (When you sort by rows, the rows of your list are rearranged, and the columns remain in the same order. When you sort by columns, the opposite kind of rearrangement occurs.) You can even define custom sorting sequences so that, for example, your company's division names always appear in a particular order, regardless of their alphabetic sequence.

Sorting on a Single Column

To sort on a single column—the Last Name column in Figure 28-1, for example—select one cell anywhere within that column. Then click either the Sort Ascending button on the Standard ...