Sorting data

Sorting data is an integral part of data analysis. You might want to put a list of names in alphabetical order, compile a list of protect inventory levels from highest to lowest, or order row by colors or icons. Sorting data helps you quickly visualize and understand your data better, organize and find the data that you want, and ultimately make more effective decisions .
You can sort data by text (A to Z or Z to A), numbers (smallest to largest or largest to smallest), and dates and times (oldest to newest and newest to oldest) in one or more columns. You can also sort by a custom list (such as Large, Medium, and Smallest) or by format, including cells color, font color, or icon set. Most sort operations are column sorts, but you can also sort by rows.

Default sort orders: In an ascending sort, Microsoft Office Excel uses the following order. In a descending sort, this sort order is reversed.

Value
Comment
Numbers
Numbers are sorted from the smallest negative number to the largest positive number.
Dates
Dates are sorted from the earliest data to the latest data.
Text
Apostrophes (') and hyphens (-) are ignored, with one exception: If two text strings are the same except for a hyphen, the text with the hyphen is sorted last.
Logical
In logical values, FALSE is placed before TRUE.
Error
All error values, such as #NUM! and #REF!, are equal.
Blank cells
In both an ascending and descending sort, blank cells are always placed last.