HOW DO YOU SPECIFY A RANGE TO SORT?

[Guest]

I have a worksheet with 5 columns the first of which is simply an "item #".
Essentially it's just a row # and keeps track of how many entries there are.
The problem is when I sort the worksheet, it includes this first column and
makes this info useless. So I want to sort the other four columns without
affecting the data in this first column. Basically I want to specify the
range. Can I do this?

 

[Fred Smith]

Select the range first, then use Data>Sort... Then it will sort only the
selected cells.

 

[Arvi Laanemets]

Hi

Another possible solutions:
1. Leave the second column empty (no entries, no heading, you can hide the
column) Now, when you select any single cell in datarange right to empty
column, the datarange is sorted, but leftmost column remains unsorted.
2. Into leftmost column enter a formula instead of value. P.e. into cell A2
enter the formula
=IF(B2="","",ROW())
, and copy it down. Now you can sort the table at your heart content - the
cell A2 always displays a 2, etc.