How to Alphabetize in Excel

How to Alphabetize in Excel – The Complete Guide Most people know how to alphabetize a list in excel, but few of them actually know the best and fastest ways to do it. In this tutorial I am going to highlight some of the best methods to alphabetize in Excel.

What does alphabetizing a column means and what are its uses: Alphabetizing a column or list means sorting a list alphabetically in excel. It can be done both ways, either in ascending order or in descending order. Uses of Alphabetic sorting in Excel: 1. It makes the data more sensible. 2. It gives you the ease to search values based on alphabetical order. 3. It also makes it easier for you to visually identify duplicate records in your data set.

Method 1 – Alphabetize using options from Excel Ribbon: This is one of the most easy ways to sort data in excel. Follow below use this method: 

First select the list which you wish to sort.

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Next, navigate to the “Data” Tab on Excel ribbon and click the “A-Z” icon for ascending order sort or “Z-A” icon for descending sort.

Sorting data table with multiple columns using this method:

If you have a list with two columns like “Student Name” and “Roll number”. And you have to alphabetize this list based on “Student Names”. Then you should use the “Sort” button instead of the “A-Z” and “Z-A” buttons. The sort button gives you more control over how you want the list to be sorted. It allows to select only one column to be sorted, it takes care of your table headers and it can also sort your data on the basis of text font or colour. Follow below steps to use this method: 

First of all select the table to be alphabetized.

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After this click the “Sort” button, on the “Data” tab.

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This will open a “Sort” dialog box, in the „Column‟ dropdown select the column based on which you want to alphabetize your data.

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In the „Sort On‟ dropdown select the „values‟ option. Using „Sort On‟ dropdown you can sort your data based on cell colour, font colour or cell icons.

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In the „Order‟ field select “A-Z” for Ascending sort or “Z-A” for descending sort. If your data is without a header row then uncheck the „My data has headers‟ checkbox, otherwise leave it checked.

Finally click on the „Ok‟ button and your data is sorted. Notice that the names are sorted but the corresponding roll numbers have not changed, so the data is still reliable.

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Method 2 – Alphabetizing a column using shortcut keys: If you are someone who loves to use keyboard more than doing the same tasks with mouse, then here I will share a list of shortcut keys that will be useful for you while sorting columns in excel. Keys

Description

Alt + D, S

This will open the Sort menu.

Alt + H, S, S

This will simulate the click event of “A-Z” icon on the ribbon. (Ascending Sort)

Alt + H, S, O

This will simulate the click event of “Z-A” icon on the ribbon. (Descending Sort)

Note before using these shortcuts make sure that you have already selected your data table.

Method 3 – Sort a list using Excel formula: In this method we will use excel formulas to alphabetize a list. The two formulas that we are going to use are CountIf and VlookUp. Many of you would be thinking that, “how we can sort a list using a CountIf function?” The trick behind this is, we can use CountIf function to count values based on the given criteria. For example: Suppose we have a list with some alphabets 'o, l, n, m, p, q'in a range A1:A6. Now if we use a formula as: =CountIf("A1:A6",">o"). The result would be 3, because only three alphabets (l, m, n) come before 'o'. This clearly indicates that CountIf function if used properly can give us sorting orders. Let‟s use this concept in our previous example. First of all we will a temporary column named “Sorting order” to our existing table. After this we will use a formula =COUNTIF($B$2:$B$11,"