Google Sheets is a powerful, free spreadsheet tool that’s hard to beat. It shares many similarities with Excel, but if you’re coming from years of using Excel, you might feel a bit lost in Sheets. While plenty of features carry over from one platform to the next, actually performing those tasks takes some learning. If you’re trying to sort and filter your data alphabetically in Google Sheets, you’ve come to the right guide.
When it comes to working in Sheets, organizing information by auto-sorting and filtering data, whether alphabetically or numerically, saves you the hassle of doing manual methods. Sorting refers to reorganizing information, while applying filters narrows the data down. Filtering allows you to hide select portions of the information from view. While either tool helps you analyze data sets, they both have their share of quirks. For controlling how your data works, filters work more directly sorting your data and showing a specific filter when anyone opens your spreadsheet.
Filters also have different view options which help you save and name filters and share different filter views with anyone who opens your document. As an example of sorting data, let’s enter random 1 and cell A1, and random 2 in B1, as well as some random characters to sort them. Let’s first highlight the cells we’d like to sort. When highlighting an entire sheet, just click the top left corner of the sheet. For multiple cells, left-click on a single cell and hold down the shift key, then left-click the ending cell.
Next, click the data tab and select sort range. In the pop-up window, check the box next to “data has a header” if your columns have titles; otherwise, do not check this box. Now, select the column you first want sorted by using the drop-down menu next to “sort by,” then select the sorting order by clicking the A to Z radial for descending or Z to A for ascending. This works with numerical values too. If you’d like to apply another sorting rule, click the “add another sort column” button and follow the same steps. Keep in mind that the order of your rules determines how the sorting is done. You can also delete a rule by clicking on the trash icon to the right of a rule. Finally, click the “sort” button to sort your range according to your rules.
Using filters is a great way to temporarily hide data in a spreadsheet. To do this, select the cell range using the same steps that we just used in data sorting, then click the data tab and select “create a filter.” This will put a filter icon within the first cell of a selected range, as well as in case all cells within the range and in green border. Clicking on the filter icon will show several options, including filter by color, condition, and values. Under filter by values, you can either select all, clear, or uncheck data points that you want hidden and click OK. You can also type something in the search box to shorten your list. For example, if we have double A and a B in the data, typing “A” will shorten your list two words that start with A.
The filter applied to a sheet can be disabled. Just click on the data tab, then select “turn off filter.” To create a filter view, click the data tab, select “filter views,” then select “create new filter view.” Once done, you can sort and filter any data as you wish. You can also modify the filter view by clicking the cogwheel icon next to the X icon at the top right of the spreadsheet to rename, duplicate, change, or delete the filter view. To exit a filter view, just click the X icon in the top right corner of the spreadsheet.
Finally, we can automatically alphabetize data in Google Sheets. On desktop, select the column that contains the data you want to sort alphabetically. You can either click on the column’s header or highlight the top cell all the way down to the final cell. Then, click on the data tab and choose between “sort sheet by column A to Z” or “sort range by column A to Z.” The former alphabetizes all data in the spreadsheet in correlation to the data range highlighted, while the latter alphabetizes all selected data just within the range and doesn’t disrupt the other areas of the spreadsheet.
If you’d rather use a formula to automatically alphabetize your data, you can do that too. To do this, highlight the cell that will display the results of the data that has been automatically alphabetized. As an example, let’s enter A, B, C, D in cells A1 to A5. Then, input the formula “=sort(A:A)” in cell B1. Column B will now display the data in column A alphabetically, including whatever new or edited data in column A is added. To sort them in descending order, just change “true” to “false.”
In conclusion, sorting and filtering data in Google Sheets is an essential skill to have when working with large datasets. If you’ve been struggling with this, we hope this guide has been helpful. By following the steps outlined above, you can sort and filter your data alphabetically with ease.