Is There a Way to Always Keep Rows Together as I sort On Colums?

[jamesmcnee]

I'm afraid I'm one of those users who just get Excel to do the one
thing I need and I don't dig deeper. Armed with antique knowledge of
Lotus 1-2-3 I stumble through Excel.

Last night I messed up a sheet I was working on.

Let's say I have information for each case in rows then the columns
contain the detail -- so the data I keep on you is Eeny (column A),
Meeny (column B), Miney (column C) and Moe (column D). Somehow I
managed to sort my data just on Eeny -- I forgot to block all the
cells in columns B,C & D -- so now I have no idea to whose Eeny all
those Meenys, Mineys and Moes belong.

Is there an Excel command telling it to always keep all the columns in
a row together?

I could always remember to block all the cells but ...

Thanks!

 

[Tobias Weber]

Is there an Excel command telling it to always keep all the columns in
a row together?

That's the default, but Excel cannot know how many columns belong to
your list. You might have a different list further right. So when you
click Sort in the menu it expands the selection around the current cell
until there's a gap. If the cursor was in A and B is mostly empty, this
results in only A being sorted.

(or was it that the algorithm looked at the first row? Try putting your
own headers there and maybe Freeze Panes)

The solution is to manually select either the whole sheet or your
columns before sorting, e.g. by dragging over the headers.

I think Insert>Name>Define for your whole data area would help as well.

 

[CyberTaz]

The trick is in *not* selecting any more than 1 cell in the data range. If
you select a "block" of cells only the data in that block will be sorted.

See Excel Help on: Sort a list of data

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac