How to Sort by Date in Excel 2010

Arbitrarily searching for data in Microsoft Excel 2010 can be very time-consuming, especially when the fields that you need to locate are not listed anywhere near each other.

Fortunately, you can easily sort data in Excel by ascending or descending values to make it easier to locate the data you need. This sorting method is not limited to numbers or tests, however.

You can take advantage of the ascending or descending sort options for cells that contain dates as well.

So, for example, if you had a spreadsheet that listed employees by their last name, you could select a “date of hire” field and choose to sort based on that data instead, allowing you to see who your oldest or newest employees were.

So continue reading below to learn how to sort by date in Excel 2010.

Sorting by Date in Excel

Note that you will be asked if you want to expand your selection to include all of the data on that row.

You probably want to do this so that the rest of the information in the row is sorted along with the date column. So, with that in mind, follow the steps in the tutorial to learn how to sort a column by date in excel 2010.

Step 1: Open your spreadsheet in Excel 2010.

Step 2: Use your mouse to highlight the cells containing the dates that you want to sort.

Step 3: Click the Data tab at the top of the window.

Step 4: Click the Sort Oldest to Newest or the Newest to Oldest button in the Sort & Filter section of the ribbon.

Step 5: Click the Expand the selection option, then click Sort to make sure that the related data in the adjoining cells is also moved when your data is sorted.

Now that you know how to sort by date in Excel 2010, you can use these steps whenever you have a series of data that you want to put in order.

There are a lot of helpful other things that can make your Excel experience easier, including the ability to fit all of your columns on one page when you are printing.