The Best Ways to Sort and Filter Data in Excel

Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool for managing your data. Especially when you have a massive amount of data with different types. Microsoft Excel provides easy-to-use tools for managing and organizing data and makes a perfect sheet for your work! But sometimes you face too much unsorted or messy data! which You can sort manually. So what’s the best way? Microsoft gives us the best two tools for managing this problem. A sort and filter tool, and these tools are very useful and easy to use. Today, I’m giving you a simple technique so you can use these two tools very easily. Let’s dive into it.

1. Go to the unsorted table that you want to sort.
2. Click the table area where you want. Make sure you click on an attached table area.
3. Go to the top ribbon area and select ‘Data’.
4. The middle of the toolbar. The short button is appearing, so click the sort button.
5. Now a new pop-up appears, which has three options: 1. Column, 2.Sort on 3.Order.
6. The first option! Click the drop-down menu and select the column data you want to sort. (In my case, I want to see which month has the most sales. So I selected a ‘total sales’ column. )
7. The second option has more 4 options: 1. Cell value, 2.Cell color, 3.Font color, 4. Condition formation icon. Choose according to your work ( in my case, I selected ‘cell value’ )
8. The third option is to select an order which has 3 options: 1. ‘Smallest to largest’, 2. ‘Largest to smallest, 3. ‘ Custom list, Like Days, weeks, and Months. ( In my case, I select ‘Largest to smallest’ )
9. After all you set! Click Enter, and your table is sorted according to your type.

( Note: An order option is changed according to your selected column. If you select a column where all the data has a numeric! Then, in the order section that appears, these two selections: “1. ‘Smallest to largest’, 2. ‘Largest to smallest’. But if you choose string data ( words ), it will appear in these two sections: 1. ‘A To Z’, 2. ‘Z To A’. A third section is always the same. )

If you want to filter some data, for Example, in 500 rows of data, you want to find data within a specific range! Then here comes a filter tool. Here is a step-by-step guide.

1. Go to the Unfiltered table that you want to filter.
2. Click the table area where you want. Make sure you click on an attached table area.
3. A Filter tool is just near a sort tool. You can easily find it in the data sections toolbar.
4. After you click the filter tool! You can see a drop-down arrow appear in the table heading.
5. Click the heading dropdown menu with the column you want to sort. Then you see several options. The first three options are sorting options, so you can sort the data as well.
6. Now you can see an option, which is a ‘numbers filter’ ( if you choose a string table, you see a Text Filter)
7. Click the number filter and select an option according to your requirement ( In my case, I want to know the data between ‘1000 to 5000’ Total sales. )
8. The new pop appears and fills the information according to your requirement, and press ok. Then your data will be filtered.
9. And if you want to see all your data back! So click on the filtered drop-down menu and click Clear the filter so your data is now back to its original shape.

• Tip 1: Always make sure your whole table is selected before sorting to avoid messing up your data.
• Tip 2: Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + L to quickly turn filters on and off.
• Tip 3: To clear a filter, click the filter icon on the header and select “Clear Filter from [Column Name].”

In Microsoft Excel, the Sort and Filter tools are incredibly useful for organizing and analyzing large amounts of data. Mastering them can save you a lot of time on any work project, big or small.

If you found this guide helpful, please leave a comment below! To see this process in action, you can also watch the video on my channel here.

Have a nice day!

Topic: Microsoft Excel