Introduction
Google Sheets offers a number of different ways to sort data, which can be found by clicking on Data off the menu bar. The process looks like this:
- Highlight the column(s) or range of cells you'd like to sort
- With your selection highlighted, click Data to view sorting options
- Choose how you'd like your data to be sorted:
- Sort sheet by column
- Sort range by column
- Sort range
For example, using our Getting Started Dataset, here's what you'll see after highlighting the Users dataset and clicking on "Data" off the menu bar:
Our Recommendation: Always default to using "Sort range"
The Sort range option provides the most precision for your sorting needs, and thus reduces room for human error.
Below is an example of Sort range used to sort the Getting Started Users dataset by User ID in Ascending order (i.e. A → Z):
We've checked Data has header row as we've included the field names in our data selection. Many times the row containing your field names will be referred to as the "header row".
Sort by Multiple Fields
Use the Add another sort column feature to sort by more than one field. For instance, if we wanted to sort the Getting Started Users dataset by Country in ascending order (i.e. A → Z), and then by Signup Timestamp in descending order (i.e. most recent date → oldest date), we'd setup our Sort range like so:
Which would produce the following result:
