The SORT function in Excel has been created to sort your data dynamically. The sort function has 3 argument
- Your data
The first argument is the data you want to sort. It could be a single column or a full Excel table.
- The key column
In case you have selected multi-column, you can specify which columns is the sorting column, also named the key column.
- Ascending or Descending order
The value 1 is for Ascending, -1 is for Descending
Let's see many situations how to use the function.
How to use the Excel SORT function?
The SORT function is available only with Microsoft 365 and Excel Online and it's very easy to use it.
- Write the name SORT in a cell
- Select the column to sort
SORT and Remove duplicates
On the previous example, even if the result is correct, we return many times the same value.
In this situation, it's better to use 2 functions
- UNIQUE to remove duplicates first,
- and then SORT the result.
In our example, the formula will be
=SORT(UNIQUE(Table1[Fruit]))
Sort on multi-columns
For the moment, we have used the SORT function on a single column. But, you can selected a table with many columns as first argument.
With this writing, the key sort is by default the first column of the selection.
Specify the sorting column
Now, if you want to sort on a specific column, you must fill in the second argument of the function SORT.
- Select your range of cells to sort
- Write the column index of the sorting key.
=SORT(Table1[[Shop]:[Date]];3)
Ascending or descending order
By default, the SORT function returns the result in ascending order. But if you want the result in descending order, you just have to indicate the value -1 in third argument.
=SORT(Table1[[Shop]:[Date]];3;-1)
