Sort Treats Empty Cells As Largest Value??

[jim evans]

I have several projects that sort data from greatest to least
(descending). That is, nothing is considered greater than a million.
Of about 4000 rows between a third and a half are blank (no count).
I need the maximum values/count at the top of the list, but Excel puts
these empty cells at the top of the list. As a result I have to do a
lot of moving of large groups of data around to put the empty/blank
cells at the bottom of these lists -- a real time consuming pain.

Is there a way to have Excel treat empty/blank cells as having lower
values than cells with values?

I assume I could fill all empty cells with zeros but this will clutter
the reports up a lot, so I'd rather not do that.

jim

 

[Dodo]

I have several projects that sort data from greatest to least
(descending). That is, nothing is considered greater than a million.
Of about 4000 rows between a third and a half are blank (no count).
I need the maximum values/count at the top of the list, but Excel puts
these empty cells at the top of the list. As a result I have to do a
lot of moving of large groups of data around to put the empty/blank
cells at the bottom of these lists -- a real time consuming pain.

Is there a way to have Excel treat empty/blank cells as having lower
values than cells with values?

I assume I could fill all empty cells with zeros but this will clutter
the reports up a lot, so I'd rather not do that.

jim

Do you have a formula in your sort column producing "" when the result is
to be nothing?
Then you get the standard Excel sort rule applied and "empty" cells come
first.

Are there any zeros that you need to be visible?
If not, let the formula result be 0 and suppress the display of zeros.
Then you wil get the sort result you wish.

 

[aaron.kempf]

use a database and you can sort things a lot easier
and you wont have to have multiple copies of the same data.. sorted in
different directions