Have you made a list of names in Excel and now you would like to reorder it alphabetically, arranging all the names from A to Z (or vice versa)? Have you decided to catalog all your movies or books in an Excel spreadsheet and would like to arrange all the titles in alphabetical order? I have good news for you.
You might have never noticed it, but Excel integrates a function that allows you to put the contents of selected cells in alphabetical order without having to rewrite any values or move cells manually. If you want to find out how to do it, take a few minutes of your free time and keep reading: below you will find explained how to sort alphabetically in Excel step by step.
For the tutorial I used the 2016 version of Excel, which is available for both Windows and macOS, but the directions in the guide apply to all editions of Office equipped with the tabbed interface, so for all editions of Office from 2007 onwards, including the online version of Excel and the eponymous app for smartphones and tablets. I wish you a good reading and good work!
Sort texts in Excel for PC and Mac
If you want to learn how to sort alphabetically in Excel, start the program via its icon on the desktop or in the Start > All Windows Programs menu and choose whether to make or open a spreadsheet in which to reorder texts in alphabetical order.
On the other hand, if you use Excel Online, what you have to do is access the link I provided, log in with your Microsoft account and open a document present on OneDrive or create a new one.
At this point, hold down the left mouse button and select all cells to be sorted alphabetically. Alternatively, if you want to reorder the values in a whole column of the spreadsheet, click on the button corresponding to this column (e.g. E) or on any of the cells it contains.
Then click on the Sort and Filter button located on the Home tab of Excel (top right, it is marked by the AZ icon) and select Sort A to Z from the menu that appears to sort the cells alphabetically.
Need to sort the column values in reverse, i.e. from Z to A? No problem. You can easily accomplish this by clicking on Excel’s Sort and Filter button and selecting the Sort from Z to A item from the menu that pops up.
If among the values to be reordered in Excel there are also numbers, format all values as text before following the procedure I have just explained, otherwise you risk that the numbers stored as numbers will be ordered before those stored as text.
To format all values in a column as text, select the column in question, go to Excel’s Home tab and select Text from the General drop-down menu at the top.
If you want to reorder all values in a column except the first one (which is usually the title), normally select the column by clicking on its letter (e.g. A), click on Excel’s Sort and Filter button and select Custom Sort from the menu that appears.
In the window that opens, put the check mark next to the item Data with headings, make sure that in the drop-down menus Column and Order are selected, respectively, the title of the column to be reordered and the option A to Z and click on the OK button to make the changes effective.
From the Custom sorting window you can also set a distinction between lowercase and uppercase values (activating the appropriate function from the Options menu) and change the criteria with which to sort the selected values (e.g. cell color or font color) using the Sort by dropdown menu.
Sort rows alphabetically in Excel
Do you want to alphabetically sort the values in a row instead of a column? Don’t worry, you can do that too.
The first step is to select the row containing the values to be reordered by clicking on the appropriate number (e.g. 6), then click on the Sort and filter button in Excel and select Custom sort from the menu that appears.
In the window that opens, click the Options button, put a check mark next to the item Sort from left to right and click OK. Next, select the number of the row you want to reorder from the Row drop-down list, make sure that A-Z is selected in the Order drop-down list and click the OK button to apply the changes.
Obviously, if you do not want to sort the row values from A to Z but from Z to A, instead of the A to Z option you must select the Z to A option from the Order drop-down menu.
Sort texts in Excel for smartphones and tablets
As you surely know, Excel is also available in the form of an app for smartphones and tablets. It’s compatible with Android (also on alternative stores) and iOS/iPadOS, and you can use it for free on all devices that are smaller than 10.1″ (otherwise, a subscription to Microsoft 365 is required).
At this point the question arises: is it possible to sort texts using Excel for smartphones and tablets? The answer is yes. There aren’t all the advanced options that can be found in the desktop variant of the application, but the answer remains yes.
To alphabetically sort the values of a column in Excel for smartphones, open the spreadsheet you want to work on, select the column that contains the values to be reordered (e.g. A) and click on the pencil icon located in the upper right corner.
Then scroll down to the menu that appears at the bottom, select the Sort and Filter option from it and tap the Increasing or Decreasing option depending on whether you want to reorder the values from A to Z or Z to A.
On tablets, Excel’s interface is practically identical to that of the application’s desktop counterpart. This means that in order to arrange the values of a column in alphabetical order, all you have to do is select the column, click on the AZ icon in the top right corner and select the option Ascending (A-Z order) or Descending (Z-A order) from the menu that appears.
If some step is not clear to you and/or you want some more information on how to sort values in Excel sheets, check out the official documentation of the application available on Microsoft’s website.