Sort rows

Sorting is used to arrange items in a list in the desired order. This can be useful when trying to find specific entries or when identifying specific groupings of entries.

A list can be sorted in two ways

• A list can be sorted while in Datasheet View. The sorting is reset when you navigate to a different page and must be reapplied the next time you want to view the same results.
• When you specify sorting as part of the view definition, sorting criteria are saved and are applied each time you open the list in the specified view.

To sort on a single column

1. Click the drop-down arrow in the column header.
2. Click Sort Ascending or Sort Descending.
3. You may repeat this process with other columns to organize the list more precisely.

To sort on multiple columns at once

When sorting on multiple columns, the order in which you sort the columns determines how the data will be organized. Usually, you must sort the most important information first. For example, to list the employees in alphabetical order for each department, it is most important that everyone is grouped by department. Therefore, you would first sort the Department column, then sort the Employees column.

1. In the ribbon, click the List tab, and then in the Datasheet group, click Show Task Pane.
2. In the Task Pane, click Sort.
3. In the Custom Sort dialog box, under Sort by, select the outermost sort column, and click Ascending or Descending.
4. Repeat the above step for two more columns, ending with the least important sorting criteria.
5. Click OK.

  Notes  

• You can apply one or more filters on a sorted view.
• The columns of type Multiple lines of text, Multi-valued choice, or Multi-valued lookup do not support sorting. If a column does not support sorting, the sorting commands are disabled for that column.
• The order of rows after sorting depends on the type of data in the columns that are used for sorting.

  Default sort orders for different types of data

  In an ascending sort, the Datasheet view uses the following order. In a descending sort, this sort order is reversed except for blank cells, which are always placed last.

  Type of data	Sort order
  Numbers	Sorted from the smallest negative number to the largest positive number
  Alphanumeric	Sorted left to right, character by character. For example, if a cell contains the text "A100," it is placed after a cell that contains the entry "A1" and before a cell that contains the entry "A11." Text and text that includes numbers are sorted in the following order: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (space) ! " # $ % & ( ) * , . / : ; ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~ + < = > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Apostrophes (') and hyphens (-) are ignored, with one exception: If two text strings are the same except for a hyphen, the text with the hyphen is sorted last.
  Logical values	No is placed before Yes.
  Error values	All error values are treated as equals for sorting purposes.