Sort function for dates not working properly

[Kayden]

I have a column with mm/dd/yy formatted for dates. When I
sort by that column, it will sort by Jan-Dec 2004, then
Jan-Dec 2003. I want it to do it by Jan 2004-Dec2003...how
can I do this?

 

[Eric]

Kayden,

Excel will always use the year then the month to sort by
dates. To sort by month ONLY, I would create another
column and use the =MONTH() formula that extracts the
month from your column of dates. After that, you can use
this new column to sort using only the month.

HTH

Eric

 

[BerHav]

Hi Kayden

If I got that right your result after sorting is, that you'll get the year descending and the month ascending
But you want to have everything descending

Did you check with another format like 'mmm/dd/yyyy' that Excel understoods your date correct? As I don't know if your dates contain days bigger than 12 it could be that Excel has dd and mm the wrong way around

Nevertheless, the behaviour of Excel is sometimes astonishing. If it's not to much work reenter the dates as it should work or 'copy' and 'paste special' - 'values only' to a new column and reformat it to mm/dd/yyyy and resort it

Bern

 

[CLR]

Regardless of the formatting, dates are just numbers to Excel, and will sort
in order, ascending or decending. If you really want control over the
sorting order of dates.......just use the =month(), =day(), and =year()
formulas to break a date apart into three columns.........then sort at
will..........

Vaya con Dios,
Chuck, CABGx3