Most of the time an ascending sorting is what we need – letters and numbers listed in the ascending order – a to z, 1 to 100 etc. And just in case you need to sort in the reverse order, you have the Z to A sort, also called the Sort in Descending order. Between the two, most people are quite happy.
However, there arises a time when you don’t want either the sort in Ascending order or the Descending order in Excel. How to play ape escape on emulator on mac mac. Examples where a Standard Sorting won’t work: For example, if the departments in your organization are Finance, Marketing, Sales & Engineering. And you want the Sales department to be listed first, followed by Marketing, Engineering, and Finance being the last. Now how would you sort the departments in this order?
On the Data tab, under Sort & Filter, click the arrow next to Sort, and then click Custom Sort. To add another sorting criteria, click Add Level. If the table has a header row, select the My list has headers check box. In Excel for Mac, you can sort a list of data by days of the week or months of the year. Or, create your own custom list for items that don't sort well alphabetically. You can also sort by font color, cell color, or icon sets.
Ascending or descending sort is not going to work. Do not despair however. 
Here is where the power of Microsoft Excel Custom sort shines. Another scenario is the Sorting of Months – say you want to sort April, May & June, in this order. Or maybe you want to sort regions by East, West, North & South. This EWNS order also needs a custom sorting in Excel. Or if you have a completely random order – which defies any kind of sorting. Say you want to list Oranges, then Apples, then Grapes, and finally Bananas.
You can go nuts without custom sorting criteria in Excel. Using Custom Sort in Excel 2003 First, let’s create the custom list in Excel. Go to Tools, Options, Custom Lists.
You can key in your list and click Add. Or you can import your list from another area of the spreadsheet, where you list the options in the sorted order. Once you have imported the list in the correct order, you can go to Data, Sort, and then click on Options at the bottom of this popup window. Choose your custom sorted list from the list of First Key Sort Order.
Your list is now sorted in your very own custom order. Alternatives to Custom Sort Of course, if you don’t want to use Custom Sort, there are other alternatives. I have often used a Lookup Table Fruit Sorting Oranges 1 Apples 2 Grapes 3 Bananas 4 I then use the inbuilt Lookup function of Excel called VLOOKUP function and pick the correct value, and then do an Ascending sort. This is a quick cheat trick. But it would be tough if you did not know how to use the Lookup functions of Excel in the first place. More on this lookup function in another post. Let me know if this neat trick help you.
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See solution in other versions of Excel: • • • Question: In Microsoft Excel 2011 for Mac, I'm putting the sum of 3 cells in a 4th cell. If the sum is greater than 10, I would like the sum to be the color red. If the sum is less than 10, I would like the sum to be the color blue. Is this possible? Answer: If you wish to change the color of the font based on the value in a cell, you will need to apply conditional formatting. To do this, select the cell that you wish to apply the formatting to.