Mario writes in with a comment about Episode 507 on sorting text that looks like dates. No need to jump thru hoops to convert the data. In Episode 535 Mario suggests an easier way to sort by month.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey! Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today we have, actually comment sent in by Mario.
Mario said, "Hey, moving back in episode 507, you had a really convoluted way to sort text that looked like dates." But actually what we had a column that had month for example, August, December, December and then another column that had day and we wanted to sort that into date sequence.
Well, back in episode 507 I jump through some hoops to convert those back to real dates, turns out we don't really need to do that.
We could always just go to Data, Sort, say that we want it to sort by the month field.
But click the Options button in the lower left hand corner, instead of a first key sort order of normal, we could specify that our data looks like January, February, March, April etc, click [ OK ] then our second sort is the day field, click [ Ascending ] and sure enough, it sorts the data into January, February, March.
A much easier way than what I did back in episode 507.
So, thanks to Mario for sending that in.
I'll be sending out an Excel master pin for this great tip, on an easier way to sort data by months.
Thanks for stopping by, we'll see next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today we have, actually comment sent in by Mario.
Mario said, "Hey, moving back in episode 507, you had a really convoluted way to sort text that looked like dates." But actually what we had a column that had month for example, August, December, December and then another column that had day and we wanted to sort that into date sequence.
Well, back in episode 507 I jump through some hoops to convert those back to real dates, turns out we don't really need to do that.
We could always just go to Data, Sort, say that we want it to sort by the month field.
But click the Options button in the lower left hand corner, instead of a first key sort order of normal, we could specify that our data looks like January, February, March, April etc, click [ OK ] then our second sort is the day field, click [ Ascending ] and sure enough, it sorts the data into January, February, March.
A much easier way than what I did back in episode 507.
So, thanks to Mario for sending that in.
I'll be sending out an Excel master pin for this great tip, on an easier way to sort data by months.
Thanks for stopping by, we'll see next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
