Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel: Updated for Office 2007

54 Excel

Sorting Data

Once you’ve entered your data into Excel, you’re ready to start analyzing

it. One of the simplest analyses is to determine the range of the data values.

Which values are largest? Which are smallest? To answer questions of this

type, you can use Excel to sort the data. For example, you can sort the gas

station data in descending order, displaying fi rst the station that has shown

the greatest total revenue down through the station that has had the lowest

revenue. Try this now with the data you’ve entered.

To sort the data by Total amount:

1 Select the cell range A1:D11.

The range A1:D11 contains the range you want to sort. Note that you

do not include the cells in the range A13:D13, because these are the

column totals and not individual service stations.

2 Click the Sort & Filter button located in the Editing group on the

Home tab and then click Custom Sort.

Excel opens the Sort dialog box. From this dialog box you can select

multiple sorting levels. You can sort each level in an ascending or

descending order.

3 Click the Sort by list box and select Total from the list range names

found in the selected worksheet cells.

4 Click Largest to Smallest from the Order list box and shown in Figure 2-14.

Figure 2-14

The Sort

dialog box

click to add a

level of

sorting values

select a data

value to sort by

select the direction

of sorting