Any Excel guru here?

Cheekykid · 21 Apr 2007 at 00:24

How can I sort out a column in terms of dates? from the oldest to the newest. My dates are in the format of: 12/05/07 etc. Thanks

Mark M · 21 Apr 2007 at 00:27

As long as its formatted to DATE then you can sort it via descending.

Cheekykid · 21 Apr 2007 at 00:48

Mark M said:
As long as its formatted to DATE then you can sort it via descending.

Ok thanks

Because I have names and stuff next to the dates how can i sort them by date but with the details of each date to not get messed up in terms of being next to the right information

mark.souness · 21 Apr 2007 at 00:51

Cheekykid said:
Ok thanks

Because I have names and stuff next to the dates how can i sort them by date but with the details of each date to not get messed up in terms of being next to the right information

highlight all the data rows and columns, choose data and sort, change sort by to the column which contains the list of dates.

Cheekykid · 3 May 2007 at 16:32

mark.souness said:
highlight all the data rows and columns, choose data and sort, change sort by to the column which contains the list of dates.

It does sort them but by date not by month

. How can i make it take into account both of them?

Tomsk · 3 May 2007 at 16:43

Cheekykid said:
It does sort them but by date not by month . How can i make take into account the month as well?

I assume by this statement that you've got the date and details in the same cell. If so then Excel is treating the cell as a General or Text type. When Excel sorts, it sorts alphabetically and numerically.

two methods.
1)
You need to put the date and details in seperate columns. Ensure the date column is in date format. This may require some tweaking (ie manual retyping, using formulas or VB code) as Excel may very well leave it as General/Text format. Once you have a column of dates and an adjacent column of details selct both columns and apply the sort.

2)
If you want to keep a single combined column of date & detials, the date part should be re-writtend as YY/MM/DD rather than the conventional DD/MM/YY. Do this and the sort will work.