Sorting ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles Eaves
  • Start date Start date
C

Charles Eaves

I am using Excel 2007 and would like to know how when I sort and when I
click on the drop down menu; I get to choose from the say: column a, column
b, etc.
I have seen from other excel sites that when you go to choose the column to
sort, I will see the titles for the columns.
How is that done?
 
Hi Charles,
if you have a blank row between your titles and the information when sorting
it will show Column A, B etc, delete that blank row and now you will have the
titles of each column to choose from
 
Hi

If you have a header row with titles, then you will be offered the header
name rather than the column letter.
Make your header row Bold or a different size, then Excel will assume it is
a header row.

If you are on XL2007, I would be inclined to use the Table object.
Place your cursor in your table of data>Insert tab>Table>My table has
headers
Then using the dropdown on any column and choosing Sort, will sort the whole
table based upon that column.
Equally, as you scroll down the list, without having to set Windows>Freeze
panes, your column headers will take the place of the column letters,
enabling you to still see what the column contains.
Scrolling back up, will show the column letters again.
 
Hi,

First, you must have titles at the top of your columns.

Second, if the data and the titles are the same data type - (most commonly,
both text) Excel will assume by default that the titles are part of the data.
This does not happen if you have a title like Date and Excel legal dates
below it, or Amount with numbers below it. You can handle this problem by a.
putting a check in the My data has headers box at the top right of the Sort
dialog box, b. by setting the format of the titles differently from that of
the second line (data). You could underline the titles, italic, or bold
them, change the alignment to center, shade the cell or color the font among
others. c. you could define the range as a Table as suggested by Roger. (and
I have to stongly agree with him regarding using Tables, they will become the
method of choice for many thing, they were available in 2003 as Lists, but
nobody took note of them, I encourage you to practice with them as much as
possible, remember they don't need to have fancy colors, you can set the
style to None after you define the table.)

3. Third, the titles must include only one line to get good results and as
mentioned the line below the titles should be your data. An emply line or
something like ==== or ------ will mess things up.
 
Thanks for the info.
I tried to sort on one of my tables in my worksheet and there it was, all
the titles appeared to sort on.
Thanks everyone forthe info.
 
Back
Top