Whether you're calculating your monthly household budget or cataloging your Pokémon collection, spreadsheets are an invaluable tool for organizing and manipulating data. For decades, spreadsheets were the domain of businesspeople and accountants via often-expensive software packages (we're looking at you, Microsoft Office). Thankfully, as people who own Chromebooks are well aware, there’s Google Sheets can sub for Excel for all but the most intensive tasks Show Spreadsheets are awesome, and you've probably used Microsoft Excel at least once in your schooling. In case you're out of practice, the thing that sets a spreadsheet apart in your typical productivity suite of software is its ability to organize and manipulate data. To cover all the ways you can manipulate data in Google Sheets, we would have to write a book. So instead, we're going to talk about ways to organize it quickly. Sorting data with Google SheetsWhen you're organizing data in Google Sheets, the first thing you need to know is which data you want to sort. When sorting Pokémon, maybe you want to sort by the Pokémon number. If you're sorting your CD collection, you might want to sort by the year it was released. If you're organizing a list of Android Police writers, you could sort by their last name. A simple sort like this can be done in a few clicks Desktop
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These sort options also work for numerical values. A to Z is analogous to sorting numbers from lowest to highest. Likewise, sorting from Z to A with numerical values arranges them from highest to lowest. Advanced sorting with Google SheetsSometimes your sorting needs are simple and all you have to do is alphabetize a class roster or sort your monthly expenses from cheapest to most expensive. But other times, you'll need to do something more complex. Perhaps you're running a competition and want to sort by category first, and then sort by time within each category. Or maybe you want to sort a Pokedex by type and then sort each type alphabetically. Google Sheets can do it, and it won't even judge you.
This opens a new overlay window that allows you to fine-tune your sort. In our case, we want to sort our Pokémon by their primary type, and then sort each type alphabetically based on the Pokémon's name. Here's how to get that done:
Now that our lists of authors and Pokémon are sorted, there's a sort of anti-sort buried in Google Sheets' menus.
Now that your data is jumbled, you may have noticed that the rows were randomly shuffled around, not the individual cells. One thing to watch out for when using the Randomize range option is highlighting all the information you want to keep together. If we had only selected column B, the names of the Pokémon would have been shuffled without affecting the data in the other three columns. So what is all this good for? That entirely depends on your use case. If you’re organizing a race, you might want an alphabetical list of all participants or you might want a list of the finishers from first to last. If you’re running a business, you might want to organize your data to see which employee had the highest sales on a given day. Make your data work for youThe use cases for spreadsheets are endless, but one of the first things you have to master before getting any value out of them is how to organize information. If sorting is trivial for you, then you should step up your skills with these eight tips and tricks for Google Sheets. Is there a way to alphabetize in Google Sheets?Decide which column will be sorted, then click a cell in the column. Click Data and select Sort Sheet by column, A-Z (ascending) or Sort Sheet by column, Z-A (descending). In our example, we'll select Sort Sheet by column, A-Z. The sheet will be sorted according to your selection.
How do you alphabetize contacts in Google Sheets?Open the dropdown list to select the column and choose between the A → Z or Z → A buttons. Then click Sort. You should now see all of your contacts organized alphabetically by last name, making locating clients or staff easy.
How do you organize a list alphabetically in Google Docs?Press CTRL-A to highlight all of the text, or press and hold the mouse button, dragging the cursor to highlight a section of the text. Then click the Add-ons menu and click on Sorted Paragraphs. In the popup menu that appears to the right, you can choose to alphabetize in one of two ways: A to Z.
How do I put sheets in alphabetical order?If you want to sort an entire data table with headers, be sure to freeze the first row. Then, at the top of your spreadsheet, click the letter of the column you want to sort by. Right-click the letter, then click "Sort Sheet A > Z."
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