Best Excel Tips & Tricks To Get More Done! | Page 12 of 12

Not Ascending… Not Descending… Just Plain Custom Sorting in Excel

July 11, 2022July 15, 2012 by Vinai Prakash

It is pretty easy to sort data in Excel.

The sorting option is available on the Home Tab of Excel 2007 or Excel 2010. See image below from Excel 2010.

Just select the data, and click on the Sort & Filter Button on the Home Tab.

You can sort A to Z (Ascending order) of the selected column, which is the default Sorting option in Excel 2003, 2007 & Excel 2010 too.

But you could also sort in the Descending Order first (Sort Z to A), just by selecting this option from the Sort button on the Home Tab.

Between these two Ascending & Descending options, you can get almost all kinds of data sorted.

However, you will come across situations, when neither of these options will give you the desired result. This happens when you want to sort in a particular fashion – which is neither ascending nor descending.

What do you do then?

Here’s where Custom Sort comes into play. This hidden gem has been available in Excel since ages (a.k.a. since Excel 95, 98… days). However, most people are stumped when it comes to using it.

Say for example, that Department wise Spending are provided in an Excel file below.

You want to sort on departments, and you want them in this order listed below.

Sales
Marketing
Service
Human Resources
Accounts
Information Technology

Clearly, this can’t be done using Ascending Sort or Descending Sort.

Custom Sort comes to the rescue.

Go to Sort & Filter button on the Home Tab of Excel 2010. Click on Custom Sort from the drop down menu. A new popup window will open.

If your data has headings, you can select the check box “My data has headers“. If you do not have column heading, then do not choose the “My Data has headers” option.

In the Sort by Column dropdown, choose Department as the option to sort on.

In the Order dropdown, choose “Custom List…“.

Click on NEW LIST, and press Add.

The cursor will move to the Empty Box in the popup. Key in the list of departments here – one per line, in the SORT order you need. Then Click OK.

Click OK on the Custom List Popup, and close all pop ups.

You will now notice that the list of Departments has been sorted, as per your specified order – which was neither ascending nor descending.

As you can see, using the Custom Sort is pretty easy. In fact, Microsoft Excel has been using this trick to sort Months, Weekdays, Quarters etc. since ages too. It’s time you learnt about this nifty technique too.

Do try it out, and let me know about your experience with Custom Sort. I’ll be glad to receive your comments and suggestions.

Additional Resources:

Cheers,
Vinai Prakash
Founder & Editor, ExcelChamp.Net

Are you facing any problem in using Excel? Any Question?

You have come to the right place. Tell us your needs. We’ll be glad to help you!

Extracting Digits from Serial Numbers in Excel

December 3, 2023June 14, 2012 by Vinai Prakash

What do you make of 12CNGY561RR9806?

Chances are that you’d be thinking this some kind of a joke… Well, it is a code, a serial number. If you open your Toaster, Phone, TV, Laptop or Tablet, you’d find a similar looking, equally difficult to read serial number.

You may be wondering – Why do they make it so difficult? And what is the purpose?

Well, these are serial numbers. Not for humans, more for computers and geeks. If you happen to take your product to the service centre, the bar code scanner can make sense of this gobbledegook right away!

To make sense, you need to be able to extract certain bits and pieces from this serial number, and analyze them separately.

For example, the first two characters (12) may mean the year of manufacture – 2012.

The next 2 characters (CN) may mean the country of manufacture- China.

The next 4 characters (CNGY) may mean the product code. Similarly, the last 4 digits (9806) may be the runing serial number of the product.

From such numbers, it is easy to find out the country, batch, make, product, and date of manufacture quite quickly.

But imagine staring a such numbers in an Excel file, and be able to quickly filter, find and select numbers belonging to a specific year, country or Product family.

Well, it can easily be done, using special in built functions in Excel – be it Microsoft Excel 2003, 2007 or Excel 2010 or even Microsoft Excel 2013.

See this Example Excel file for trying it yourself.

To solve this problem, we will use Excel’s inbuilt Text Functions – Left, Right and Mid.

The Left function will extract any characters from the left of a string. LEFT(‘ABCDEF’, 2) will extract AB.

The Right function will extract any number of characters you need, from the right of a string. RIGHT(‘ABCDEF’, 3) will extract DEF.

And the Mid function will extract any characters from the middle of a string. You just have to specify the starting number, and the number of digits required.

So, MID(‘ABCDEFGH’, 3, 2) begins to extract from the Third character, and extracts 2 characters. Therefore, the characters, “CD” get extracted easily.

Using these 3 simple functions, we can extract any digit, or character from any string in Excel. And this feature has been in Excel since ages…

Enjoy, and all the best!

Do post some comments if this article helped you!

Additional Resources:

Cheers,
Vinai Prakash
Founder & Editor, ExcelChamp.Net

Are you facing any problem in using Excel? Any Question?

You have come to the right place. Tell us your needs. We’ll be glad to help you!

Are you facing any problem in using Excel? Any Question?

Are you facing any problem in using Excel? Any Question?

Additional Resources for Learning Excel & Become A Pro