Forum Discussion
Help with date sorting in order
I have an actions list I have inherited. There are a bunch of actions with due dates. I am trying to sort by due date. I have tried sorting oldest to newest and even newest to oldest but it is not working. All content has been formatted to "Date" all have the date written in the same format, now the fact we are using European date format dd/mm/yyyy might have upset excel but I am sure I have had this working before.
I am on the Data Tab and no other filters are selected. I do want to be able to filter out some items and still see items sorted by oldest due date to newest due date.
Any ideas? do I need to attach the content I'd have to delete some for sensitivity but can do if it will help.
Many thanks
Tessa
3 Replies
Do you want to sort by the "Target Date" column? The dates in this column are left-aligned which means they are text. If dates which are text are sorted the result is not as intended.
Thank you for such a super speedy reply. This doc is stored in SharePoint and so I opened it in excel to see if that gave me more fexibility. When I look at "Format Cells" the cells are all in "Date" format. Do I need to change them to . separating the numbers rather than / as in your example? Or change to number format but surely that will sort by the first set of digits first all the way down so I could have 5th of one month followed by 6th of the next?
Even if the formatting is set to Date, Excel can still treat the values as Text.
Try the following:
- Select the target dates.
- On the Data tab of the ribbon, click Text to Columns.
- Click Finish.
- Are they now right-aligned? If so, select any one of them, then sort the range.
You shouldn't change / to .
The . is OliverScheurich 's data separator in his local language.
