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Excel is a platform that allows you to create spreadsheets with data and formulas. It is incredibly useful in everyday life with businesses as well as individuals.
But how do you alphabetize in Excel? Alphabetizing is the process of sorting your data into alphabetical order rather than the original jumbled order that you first inputted it in.
Today we are going to be looking at the easiest way to alphabetize your Excel spreadsheets so that it is as easy to find data as possible.
Alphabetizing Your Data In Excel
There are a few methods of how you can sort your data in alphabetical order in Excel. Here are the two easiest methods that you can use to get your data much more organized and usable.
The Sorting Method
To use the sort method, you first need to select all of the data that you want to alphabetize.
Step
Select The Data
To use the sort method, you first need to select all of the data that you want to alphabetize. To do this, use your cursor to select the data. You can select one column, multiple columns, one row, multiple rows, or the entire spreadsheet.
Step
Organizing More Than One Column
Organizing more than one column means that Excel will match the data from the second column to the newly alphabetized first column. This is a great feature that means you don’t need to re-input the data after the order of the first column has changed.
Step
Sort
Now that you have highlighted the cells that you want to organize, click the Sort button from the Data Ribbon at the top of your screen.
A box will appear and ask you for the column that you want to sort the data by. You can then decide how you want to alphabetize the data – either by A-Z or by Z-A.
Step
Save
Click OK to save your settings. The box should disappear and you will be left with your organized data.
The Filtering Method
The second method of alphabetizing your Excel spreadsheet is using the filter function. This method is good for people who are wanting to repeat an action multiple times so that you don’t have to keep sorting your data like in the first method
Step
Select All Of The Cells
To use the filter method, select all of the cells that you want to alphabetize – as well as any columns that you want to be included in the new order. Click Filter in the top ribbon.
Step
Menu Pop Up
At the top of the column you should see a small drop-down arrow when you hover over the column letter. Click this arrow and you should see a menu pop up.
Follow the menu down until you find the A-Z or Z-A buttons. Choose which option you’d prefer and the column will automatically organize itself alphabetically.
You can now do this with any columns that you have in your Excel spreadsheet.
Summary
Both of these methods work very well if you are trying to alphabetize data on your Excel spreadsheet. You can alphabetize as much or as little data as you need to.
The sorting method is great for when you want to permanently organize your data and don’t plan on switching it back to its original order any time soon.
However, the filtering method is good if you want to keep switching from sorted to unsorted data. Plus, we think that the filtering method is slightly quicker than the sorting method.
If you don’t want to keep dealing with pop up boxes, the filtering method is the one for you.
No matter which method you choose, it’s clear that alphabetizing your data could not be easier within Excel. If you ever want to undo your alphabetizing, simply use the shortcut CTRL + Z to undo your previous work.
