Fancy(?) sorting

[bt]

I have simple, but big, spreadsheet that I need to do some sorting on.
The sheet has about 150 lists each with 20 or 30 items. I want to
sort the lists into alphabetic order, by list name, but leave each
list's contents in the order as it is now. The list names are in
column A and the lists contents are in column B.

There must me a relatively easy way to do this. Any ideas??

btw, I'm using Office 2000 on a Windows PC

thanks in advance, BDT

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

bt,

This sounds like one big table, which you want to sort on your "list"
column. Select the two columns, Data - Sort. Be sure to indicate whether
you have a heading row (one, at the top) or not. Examine the results
carefully, and if it's not what you want, you can undo it. Do not save the
file until you are certain the sort was valid. Excel is capable of turning
a good list into garbage.

If each of your lists has it's own headings, this won't work. You'll have
to sort them individually.

If you post back, say more about your lists. All in one sheet? Give some
examples of your data.

 

[bt]

bt,

This sounds like one big table, which you want to sort on your "list"
column. Select the two columns, Data - Sort. Be sure to indicate whether
you have a heading row (one, at the top) or not. Examine the results
carefully, and if it's not what you want, you can undo it. Do not save the
file until you are certain the sort was valid. Excel is capable of turning
a good list into garbage.

Yes, this would work, except that the name of the list is not carried
down to each row in the list. It is only on the top row which is the
row above the items in the list.

If each of your lists has it's own headings, this won't work. You'll have
to sort them individually.

No headings, each list is formated the same although the number of
items varies.

If you post back, say more about your lists. All in one sheet? Give some
examples of your data.

All in one sheet. Here is what it looks like (I said it was simple):

Musician W
song 1
song 2
..
..
song 23

Musician B
song 1
song 2
..
..
song 25

Etc.


For any given musician, the songs are in the desired order, but
unfortunately, the musicians have been added somewhat arbitrarily over
time and I want to organize them alphabetically.

thanks, BDT

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

bt,

I don't think there's any Excel command that will do what you want. Excel
works with standard tables, where there is one set of headings, and one row
per item (as with the example I gave you of a consolidated list). You could
still set it up the way I suggested (add a Musician column, and put the
musician name in each of his/her rows), and hide that column. It wouldn't
take long using the Fill Handle. Sorting the table on that column would
give you the results you want. It would leave the songs in their original
order in each musician's section. This won't give you the section titles
("Musician W") you currently have, though.

If you want to do it by hand, select all the rows of a musician's section,
including it's heading (drag through the row headers at the left). Then
grab this stuff by the border, hold Shift, and drag the insert bar to
wherever it belongs. This allows you to move a section, make room elsewhere
for it, and delete the hole you left behind.

Or you can cut each section, then use the right mouse key, and "Insert cut
cells" to put it elsewhere.

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

BDT,

Oops. It's been a while. You still there? I was in California for a
while.

Your list can't be sorted on Musicians as is. If you put the Musician in
each song record (row), then it would work. The songs would remain in their
order within Musician. But Musician would appear in each row -- probably
not what you want.

You could have another column for display of the Musician. To do that, you
might add a sort of "Song 0" record, containing the Musician, and use that
column for display of the Musician. Only the song 0 record would have the
musician in it -- the songs 1-n would be empty in this additional column.
So it would serve as a Musician header. You'd then sort on the (original)
column that has Musician in every record. You could hide that column when
not needed.