How to alphabetize data by classifying it in Google Sheets

Making sense of data is what spreadsheets are all about. The more content you add, the more organized you need to be. Fortunately, Sheets offers multiple ways to organize your data, including sorting and filtering. Today we are going to use the sort function to alphabetize data in Google Sheets.

There are a couple of sorting options within Sheets. You can sort by sheet, by range, or named range. Each has different applications depending on the type of data you are working with.

Literate data in Google Sheets

It stands to reason that for literacy to work, your worksheet must contain words as well as numbers. You can order numbers, but we’ll cover that in a minute. If you have column headings, you will need to freeze them first so that they are not included in the literacy process.

1. Highlight the row you want to freeze.
   
2. Select View from the top menu.
   
3. Then, hover over Freeze and select 1 row from the list, or more if you need them.
   

Now you can proceed to sort the data alphabetically.

So alphabetize a column:

1. Open the sheet you want to sort.
2. Highlight the entire column you want to sort alphabetically.
   
3. Select Data from the top menu.
   
4. Then click Sort range by column A – Z.
   

Of course, you can select reverse literacy by selecting Sort range by column Z –A.

To alphabetize a sheet:

1. Open the sheet you want to sort.
2. Highlight the entire sheet by clicking the corner button above A1.
   
3. Select Data from the top menu.
   
4. Then click ranking range.
   
5. Select the first column you want to sort by in the pop-up window.
   
6. Add another column if you want to continue sorting columns.
   
7. Select Sort out when you have enough columns.
   

This will sort each column you have selected. You can also simply select the populated cells by dragging the mouse to include all the cells you want to sort. This is most useful if you have spreadsheet items that you don’t want to include.

Sort by numeric value

Although the numbers obviously cannot be sorted alphabetically, the same tool sorts the numbers in ascending or descending order. The process is exactly the same as literacy, where A is the lowest number and Z is the highest.

1. Open the sheet you want to sort.
2. Highlight the column you want to sort.
   
3. Once again, select Data from the top menu.
   
4. As before, select Sort range by column A – Z either Sort range by column Z – A.
   

Just like alphabetically, you can also sort by multiple columns in exactly the same way as described above. Select more than one column from the pop-up menu and Sheets will sort them for you.

Sorting data is essential in any spreadsheet and Google Sheets does a good job of making your task easier. However, it is not without errors and it is possible that when sorting mixed columns or columns with numeric values ​​in addition to alphabetical ones, things may not go as planned. However, repeating the process a couple of times usually fixes it.

Do you have any Google Sheets tips you’d like to add? Do you want us to cover something else? Tell us below if so!