Sorting excel

plberg58 I suspect a column adjacent to the one you are trying to sort has data in it. See attached picture. I selected only cell G1 and then Sort, A to Z and "My list has headers" checked. Excel automatically expands the sort range to include adjacent columns, but it does NOT automatically set the column by which you want to sort. Leave "Column" blank and you will get "Missing column/row name" at the bottom and the red exclamation mark next to "Sort by". Choose the header of the column you want to sort by and OK. 

Now, if you list has adjacent data, but you really want to sort one column only, select the entire column (or range in that column, including the header). Press Sort and confirm that you want to continue with the current selection, i.e. that you do NOT want to expand the selection.

Check your sheet and see if this solves your problem. By the way, this is not affected by using custom lists.