In Microsoft Excel, is there anyway to sort by more than three fields at once?

Question

I have a spreadsheet I need to sort by about 55 different fields. The more I can sort at once, the better. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

I think you should use Access instead ....55 fields sound too many ...

Answer 2

If you have to sort by more than 3 fields you have to go from last to first. Here's an example, the following list would be sorted as follows:

Planet, Country, State, City, Street, Last Name, First Name

First Name would be in the 3rd row
Last Name would be in the 2nd row
Street would be in the 1st row

then do another sort:
this time City would be in the 3rd row
State would be in the 2nd row
Country would be in the 1st row

for the final sort Planet would be in the 1st row. Understand?

I suggest making a macro to do this (Tools, Macro, Record New Macro, name it and then do your sorts).

An additional hint: Do you know how to filter data? This may be of more use to you. To do this you would click on the title row and select Data, then select Auto Filter. Drop down menus appear. In our above example, you could then filter it so only the U.S. comes up. Do your sort, then filter it so Canada comes up, etc.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I can't imagine a datafile that needs to be sorted by 55 fields. With that said, so far as I know, we can only sort by 3 fields at a time, then repeat.

Here are some tips in sorting.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm

Answer 4

Select the first field the first field, Hold Shift, select the last field, and all the fields in-between will go along with it, then do normal sorting

Answer 5

If you have to do this more than once, write a macro.

Otherwise, sort three at a time, least important first. It'll end up right.