Excel has built-in sorting features, which are sufficient for most Excel sorting tasks. However, if you need sorting features that are beyond those basics, the ASAP Utilities Excel tools might have what you need.
NOTE: I do not have any association with the ASAP Utilities tool, or its developers, and do not earn any commissions on their product sales.
If you need advanced sorting features in Excel, beyond the built-in sorting commands, the ASAP Utilities Excel tools might have what you need.
There are many advanced sorting options in the ASAP Utilities for Excel tools, which go way beyond Excel's sorting in A-Z or Z-A order.
This screen shot, from the product information page, shows the ASAP Utilities Advanced Sorting dialog box, with a long list of sorting options.
There are many advanced sorting options in that drop down list, shown above. The font in the screen shot is quite small, so I've listed a few of the sorting options below, so they're easier to read:
And many other advanced sorting options!
To learn more about the ASAP Utilities for Excel, and its 300+ Excel utilities, you can visit their website.
On the ASAP Utilities home page, you can see the high rating that their product has received, and they've been in business for 23 years. The tools are used by over 750K Excel users and in 23.5K organizations.
If you're interested in trying the tools, go to the website's Download page.
If you decide to buy a licence for the Business edition, at the end of the free trial, there is a one-time fee (currently $49 US), and volume discounts are available.
NOTE: I do not have any association with the ASAP Utilities tool, or its developers, and do not earn any commissions on their product sales.
For more information on sorting in Excel, you can visit the pages listed below. All of these pages are here on the Contextures website, or on my Contextures blog.
See all the basics steps for how to sort an Excel list, by row or column. Tips also show how to avoid painful mistakes when sorting your spreadsheets. Other examples show how to sort multiple columns or rows, and other sorting tips and techniques.
For example, this video shows the steps for doing a custom sort in the Sort Custom Order video, or follow the written instructions, below the video.
Most of the time, things go smoothly when you sort a list in Excel. Sometimes though, things go wrong, so be sure to take care, and follow these steps to avoid sorting problems, and check your data, right after you sort it.
Sorting can also cause unexpected problems if your Excel list contains formulas, such as VLOOKUP, INDEX and MATCH. This video shows and example of a VLOOKUP sorting problem, and there are details on the Excel VLOOKUP - Examples page.
Quickly sort data with a macro that runs when you click a hidden shape at the top of a column. The macro selects the whole data range, to help prevent scrambled data.
This short video shows how the macro sorts the data, and the details are on the sort data with a macro page.
This free Excel Sheet Navigator add-in puts a new command on the Excel Ribbon (Excel 2007 and later), with a list of sheets in the current workbook -- makes it easier to navigate through a large file.
Originally, this page had information on Jim Cone's Special Sort Excel add-in. That tool had over 24 sorting options, such as reverse sort, color sort, and day of year sort.
Unfortunately, Jim Cone is no longer selling his add-in, so I removed that information and the link, which no longer works.
As a replacement option, I linked to the ASAP Utilities for Excel tool, which has many advanced sorting features, among its 300+ Excel utilities.
Last updated: December 6, 2023 2:02 PM