How to Alphabetization by multiple columns in Excel?

Now, it is time to get fancy. We have learned how to sort and alphabetize by a single column. But what if we wish to sort by multiple columns — for example, alphabetize our order list by customer name first, but within each "customer name" block sort from the highest-value order to the lowest-value order? We can do this by using Excel's full sort functionality feature. First, we will start by selecting the whole range of data we want to sort. You can do this by clicking and dragging with your mouse to select all the cells you wish to sort, but there is a shortcut: make sure a cell within your data table you have selected, then press Ctrl + A on a PC or ⌘ + A on a Mac. When you are making this selection, it is very important to check to ensure that your entire table is highlighted before proceeding. If there are blank rows, then they may cause the Ctrl + A shortcut to only highlight part of the table; this will mess up your sorting or only partially sort the data.

Always double-check to ensure that your whole data range is highlighted before you move ahead with alphabetization and sorting.

Now, press the large Sort icon in the Data ribbon:

Pressing this button will bring up the Sort dialogue, a screen that will allow us to sort our data with the application of multiple levels of specificity. The sort dialogue appears like this:

You will notice that Excel gives us a couple of options for alphabetization in this dialogue:

• Column. This is the column that you would like Excel to alphabetize or sort by. In this case, let us select "Customer", since the first things we want to do is alphabetize our list by customer name.
• Sort on. This is the cell characteristic in the given column that we would like to sort based on. We will almost always keep Values selected in this dialogue; although once you start experimenting with more advanced sorts you can also choose to sort by Cell color, Font color, and Cell icon. For now, just leave the Values selected.
• Order. This allows us to choose whether we want to sort in ascending or sort descending order. In this instance, let us leave the order set to A to Z to alphabetize our list in an ascending manner.

If we press the OK button now, our list would sort ascending, just like we did before with the quick sort icons. But we are going to go a little further by adding another level of sorting. First, press the Add Level button in the top-left corner of the sort dialogue. You will see that another line, labeled Then by, appears:

Using this second line, we can choose a second level of sorting that will occur after our data is alphabetized customer name wise. Enter the following into the boxes on the second line, like so:

• Column. Use Sales, because we want to order the lines in our table by sales value after we have alphabetized them customer name wise.
• Sort on. Leave this set to Values, as we will do in the vast majority of cases.
• Order. You will notice that since we have the Sales column selected, the options in this box have changed; Excel recognized Sales as a number, so it gives us a new set of options for sorting: Largest to smallest and Smallest to largest. Let us select Largest to smallest now, since we want each customer's largest order to appear on the top of its section.

Finally, press the OK button to complete the sort job. Viola! Our data is now sorted in a new order: first, alphabetically customer name wise; then, by sales values from largest to smallest.

In the next blog, we will learn “How to do Sorting or alphabetizing in a custom order” in Excel.

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