Having your data arranged is very important to help you visualize and understand it. Most often, we will sort by a number or values but there will also be times when we want to arrange text such as names, places or codes sequentially. In this article we will show you exactly how to sort alphabetically in Google Sheets to create effective data sets in two easy methods.
Say you have more than 100 participants for your marathon. To be able to make registration on the event day quicker, you decide to alphabetize the participant names and assign them to different booths. Doing this manually is a very tedious process, lets see how to sort alphabetically to make this easier:
Press any cell within your datasheet and press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac) to select all contents for huge sets of data.
Since the data has headers, we will check “Data has header row” but you can skip this if your data has none.
You can also choose which column/header to sort by using the dropdown menu and whether you want it to be from A to Z or in reverse.
Tip: If you need to sort one column AFTER another, simply press “Add another sort column” for the succeeding columns to be sorted out. You can do this for as many columns as you have.
Now your data is sorted by full name starting from A. You can use the same procedure to arrange according to last names.
Pressing Create a Filter will make filter icons appear beside each individual column header.
The contents of the adjacent columns will also reflect the change in order. You can do this to alphabetize any column in Google Sheets.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like our article on how to sort Google Sheets or our article on how to sort by date in Google Sheets.
If you want to learn how to sort columns in google sheets or get a copy of our Google Sheets address book template, we also suggest checking out our detailed guide.
