How to

How to Make Sortable Headings in Excel

Microsoft Excel ends up being a powerhouse as soon as you enter its extensive list of sorting choices. Here we’ll cover its most simple option for sorting, a basic choice that enables us to reorder data in particular columns.

In your spreadsheet, highlight the row with the headings you want to sort. If you do not want to arrange all of the data, you can also simply select those cells you need by highlighting them, or by holding Ctrl and clicking to choose multiple unconnected cells.

From the top of the page, click “Data” to change tabs.

Find “Sort & Filter,” then click the “Filter” icon. This will include a little down arrow to the right of each heading.

Click the arrow next to “Total $” and sort by largest to smallest or tiniest to biggest by clicking the appropriate choice in the dropdown. This option works for any number, so we can also utilize it for the “Sales” and “Product ID” sections.

Words, on the other hand, are sorted in a different way. We can sort these alphabetically (from A to Z or Z to A) by clicking the arrow next to “Name” and then choosing the appropriate choice from the dropdown.

Arranging also works by date. If we include an extra column (following the actions above to make it sortable) with dates, we can sort inventory by what’s fresh and what is nearing its sell-by date. We do this by clicking the arrow beside “Received” and selecting to sort from oldest to newest or most recent to earliest.

Acting on this example, let’s say we want to label products that need to be sold quickly. We can label the dates with a basic green, yellow, and red system to reveal items that will benefit a couple of days, those that are nearing their sell-by date, and those that need to go right away. We can then arrange these by color, to put the red items at the top of the list.

To sort this, click the arrow next to “Received” and select “Sort by Color.”

Click the cell color you want atop your list. In our case, we’ll choose red so we can see the items about to ruin. This is simple to visualize in our example, as we just have 5 items. However think of if this was a list with 500 entries instead. Arranging by color ends up being much more useful then.

Now you can make any type of Excel spreadsheet data sortable in simply a few clicks.

Find “Sort & Filter,” then click the “Filter” icon. Click the arrow next to “Total $” and sort by largest to tiniest or tiniest to largest by clicking the proper choice in the dropdown. Sorting also works by date. If we include an extra column (following the steps above to make it sortable) with dates, we can sort inventory by what’s fresh and what is nearing its sell-by date.

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