Image via Flickr.
What’s the first thing that hits your mind when someone talks about sorting? I am sure that ascending and descending are two words that ring a bell. Or maybe it was the famous Sorting Hat from Harry Potter.
Original photo via Flickr.
While those methods are tried and true (The Sorting Hat is never wrong), there are other ways to sort the data. As an example, sample data is shown below. It has three columns: Name, Department, and Salary.
My boss asked me to sort the data by Room. His claim neither increased nor decreased. Instead, he wants the data to be sorted in the following order.
Thankfully, I use MS Excel to work with data sets. And so I can bring results with very little effort and in a very short time. Here is how you can use this feature and apply custom sorting on MS Excel.
Hot Tip: Another powerful data feature of MS Excel is Filter select. Read our guide to better understand and learn how to use it.
Step 1: Select the data area you want to sort. For me it was the data displayed in the template.
Step 2: Once you have selected the data, go to the ribbon and switch to Data navigation. Click Type.
Step 3: That will launch Type dialog window. Drop down Sorted by column (here I choose Room), select value below Arrange And List of customers because Order.
Step 4: After clicking on ALRIGHT you will see a window named Custom list.
It’s likely that you haven’t added a custom list if you haven’t used it before. So add a new list, the one you need, here.
Step 5: Under List items, enter the values that you want the custom list to contain. Make sure your list is in the same order that you want the data sorted. Also, each entry should be placed on a new line. When done, click Add.
Step 6: Your list should now appear under custom list. Highlight the list and click ALRIGHT.
Step 7: Come back Type window, make sure that Order reflect the custom list you just created. Click ALRIGHT.
Step 8: That’s it. Your data is sorted. Check out the results from my sample below.
Cool Tip: We have a cool custom list trick that helps you pick a random name from a given list. And the trick is not a built-in feature of Excel. So don’t forget to check it out!
Conclusion
I still remember a college assignment where we had to write a program in Java. The task is to sort the list of data in a custom order. It turned out to be a huge effort. And that’s what made me realize the value of MS Excel’s custom sort feature.
Hope it will help you to simplify your work with Excel.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
