Creating a custom sort order

- Most sorting operations arrange data into numerical or alphabetical order. But what do you do if your data doesn't make sense if it's sorted into alphabetical order? Well, in that case, you can create a custom order. This workbook contains two data lists that are both organized in alphabetical order for one column, but it doesn't make sense. On the left, you can see that I have the months for the year 2014 arranged in alphabetical order, which of course, is not the correct order for where they fall in the year and the same thing for the seasons.

Over in the right section, I have Fall, Spring, Summer, and Winter, when in fact, those are not in the proper order. So how do I sort using a custom list? Well, it depends on whether the custom list is built in or whether it's one you have to make yourself. Months are, in fact, a custom list that comes with Excel, so you can just make the appropriate selections when you perform your sort. So I'll click cell B2, actually it's already selected, but you can click any cell in the B column in the left hand data list and then on the Home tab, click the Sort and Filter button and click Custom Sort.

And here you can see that I have a sort level, and I'm sorting by Month, which is correct, but I'm sorting on Values, which is correct, A to Z, which is not. That's what gave me this nonsensical alphabetical order in the first place. So I need to click the order list arrow and from the three items that appear, I click Custom List. Doing so displays the Custom Lists that are built into Excel or that you have added yourself. So you see here we have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday in both short and long formats.

The short format for the months and the long format for the months. So what I want to do is to click this bottom list: January, February, March, and so on and click OK to use that as my sorting criteria. And now when I click OK, you see that my list has been sorted into the appropriate order. So that's what you do if you're using one of the four lists that are built in. If you want to create your own, then you need to open the Excel Preferences dialog box. To do that, hold down the command key and type a comma.

That displays the Excel Preferences dialog box. You can also display that by opening the Excel menu and clicking Preferences. But from here look in the middle section and click Custom Lists. The Custom Lists dialog box lets you either use an existing list or create a new one. So I'll click New List and then click over in the List Entries box. I want to put the seasons into the proper chronological order so I'll type Spring, then return, Summer, return, Fall, return, Winter and then click Add.

Doing so displays the list, you see it has Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. If I want to delete a list after I've created it, then I can just click it and click Delete. If you're values are already available in your worksheet, then you can display the Custom Lists page of the Excel Preferences dialog box, then click in the Import List from Cells box, click the Collapsed Dialog button, select the cells and then click Import. But in this case, I'm done, so I can close the Excel Preferences dialog box.

Now I'll go to my data list on the right and I'll click any cell in the Season column, then again, on the Home tab, click the Sort and Filter button, click Custom Sort. So I'm sorting by and my column will be Season. I am sorting by Values but instead of A to Z, I'll click the list arrow and get a Custom List and I'll click Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, which is at the bottom. Click OK, everything looks good, click OK again and you see that I have Spring, for 2014 and 2015, Summer for 2014 and 2015 and so on.

So to edit this sort, I can go back in, click Custom Sort, now I'll add a new sorting level. So I'll click the Add Level button. I want to sort by Year, Values, Smallest to Largest, and I also want to change the order of the rules. So I will drag Sort By below Then By and you can see that I am now sorting by Year and the by Season. So I'll click OK and my list is now in what I wanted as my original order with the seasons in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter order and it's also ordered by year.

Creating a custom list lets you sort your data using orders that are specific to your business. Creating a list of seasons in the order Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter helps you sort data by time with the added benefit of being able to extend the list using Auto Fill.