Sorting can be dangerous! If you scramble your sheet - remember Undo! It's your friend and is found under Edit. If you think you've messed your spreadsheet up, begin with an Undo.

For a quick sort by the contents of a particular column, click once in the column that you want to sort by. For example, if last names are in column B, click once anywhere in Column B. You will see this menu. It is going to sort everything on the Sheet by the contents of column B. You can choose A-Z or Z-A order. column b.png

To sort by a combination of columns:

Begin by selecting the whole spreadsheet. The quickest way to do that is to click once in the upper left corner in between A & 1. The entire spreadsheet will be highlighted in blue.

select all.png

Or if you wish to sort just a certain part of the spreadsheet, highlight just those cells you want to sort.

While cells are selected, choose Data - Sort Range...

You will then see the menu below. If you have titled in the first row, you can choose "Data has header row," so that you can then choose which columns to sort by based on their titles. If you leave it unchecked, just sort by the letters on the columns.

Note that you can add more Sort Columns. Example: If you sort by Grade then Last Name, the sort would put all students in the same grade together and sort by name within each grade.

range 1.png