How to Sort and Filter Data in Excel

A list of orders needs to be read newest first, with only one region showing. Sorting and filtering are two separate tools that share the same dropdown arrow, and the arrow only appears once the range is told where its header row is.

Turn on the filter arrows

Click any single cell inside the data, then choose Data, Filter, or press Ctrl + Shift + L (Cmd + Shift + F on Mac). Excel finds the edges of the block on its own and puts a dropdown arrow on each header cell.

Sort and filter from a header arrow

Click the arrow on a column. The top of the menu sorts: Sort A to Z, Sort Z to A, or Sort by Color. Below that is a checklist of every value in the column. Untick Select All, tick the values you want, and click OK. The rows that fail the test are hidden, not deleted, and the row numbers on the left turn blue.

Sort by more than one column

Open Data, Sort. Confirm My data has headers is ticked, pick the first column in Sort by, then click Add Level for the next one. Sorting by Region and then by Date groups each region together and orders the dates inside it. Levels are applied from the top down, so drag them into the order you want.

Clear a filter

Click the funnel icon on the column and choose Clear Filter From, or use Data, Clear to drop every filter on the sheet at once. Data, Filter again removes the arrows entirely.

Convert the range to a table

Select a cell in the data and press Ctrl + T. A table keeps its filter arrows permanently, extends formatting and formulas to any row typed underneath, and gives the range a name that formulas elsewhere can point at.

Never sort with only one column selected. Highlighting a single column and sorting it moves those values while the rest of each row stays put, which silently scrambles the records. Click one cell instead and let Excel take the whole block.

Undo is the repair. Press Ctrl + Z (Cmd + Z on Mac) right away. Once the file is saved and closed, the original row order is gone unless a column recorded it.

Sources. Sort data in a range or table in Excel, Filter data in a range or table in Excel, Create and format tables.