In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the SORT function in Google Sheets
How to Use the SORT Function in Google Sheets
Organizing data can be a critical part of your data analysis. You may find yourself needing to sort a range in ascending or descending order.
For example, you may have a list of customers or respondents in a spreadsheet and you want to sort them alphabetically by last name. The SORT function can help you do this quickly and easily.
In this guide, we will discuss how to use the SORT function in Google Sheets. We will cover the different parameters of the function and how the output looks like.
How to Arrange Values Using the SORT Function in Google Sheets
Here’s how to arrange values using the SORT function in Google Sheets.
Step 1
First, identify the range of values you want to sort. You must also select a cell to add the SORT function to.
In this example, we want to sort the values in the range A2:A16 and output the sorted range starting at cell C2.
Step 2
The SORT function requires at least three arguments. The first argument will indicate the range to sort. The second argument will select which column in the range to use for sorting. The third argument will determine whether the data will be sorted in ascending order.
In our example, we will indicate a value of 1 for the second argument, since we only have one column to sort with.
Step 3
We can also sort a range with two or more columns.
In the example above, we sorted the range A2:C16 by the price field.
Step 4
We can also sort a range using two or more fields. The user simply needs to provide an additional pair of arguments to indicate the additional field and the sort order.
In the example above, our range is first sorted in ascending order according to price. For items with the same price, they are further sorted by the number of sales.
Summary
This guide should be everything you need to use the SORT function yourself in Google Sheets.
You may make a copy of this example spreadsheet to test it out on your own.