Except sort data by “A to Z” (alphabetical order, for numbers from small to large), we can also sort data by date, month or year if these conditions are given. In this article, we will show you the way to sort data by day of week.

EXAMPLE

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In the left table, sales are sorted by date. Now, we want to sort them by day of week, see the table on the right side for example. Obviously, we cannot sort them just by clicking “Sort A to Z”, in this way day of week values will be sorted by alphabetical order. To sort data by proper order as we expected, we can create a customer list with the help of Sort->Custom List function.

RESOLUTION

Excel Sort module provides several sorting rules for users to sort data. Except normal “A to Z” or “Z to A”, it also provides orders like by month or by day of week. Users can also create custom list depends on requirement.

 STEPS

a. Select table A2:C15 ignoring the headers, click Data in the ribbon, click Sort button in Sort & Filter section.

b. Sort dialog pops up. In Column sort by dropdown list, select column “Day of Week”. Select the column you want to sort by in this step, as we want to sort data by day of week column, so we select it.

Keep Sort On selection unchanged, in Order dropdown list, select “Custom List”.

c. After selecting “Custom List”, “Custom Lists” dialog pops up. In Custom lists panel, select “Sunday, Monday…”, then day of week values are listed in the right panel with expected order, they are sorted from Sunday to Saturday.

d. Click OK on this dialog. We return to Sort dialog. Now in Order dropdown list, order “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday…” is displayed. Click OK to apply this setting for the selected table.

e. Now sales are sorted by day of week properly. The same values of day of week are grouped.

COMMENT

1. If we select day of week abbreviations like “Sun, Mon, Tue…” in “Custom lists” to sort data, data is sorted improperly, Friday is listed on top.

2. If selected range with headers included, we need to check on “My data has headers” when applying sorting settings. See screenshot below. This option is checked by default.

3. If you want to sort day of week by another order, for example from Monday to Sunday, you can just enter a new list in “List entries” panel. Enter “Monday” as the first entry, press Enter to separate list entries.

After creating your list, click Add button to add the new list to custom list. Then you can sort values by this new list properly.