Sorting - why can you only sort by 3 columns?

[lars]

Is there a way to sort data by more than the three columns in the sort option....Lotus 123 had more fields to choose 5 years ago.

[Jack in the UK]

Excel limits to 3 sadly and your need VBA to over come this...

[Jay Petrulis]

Hi,

No way to sort on more than three in one shot. One workaround is to sort on the least important columns first.

1. Sort on columns D and E, for instance
2. Then sort on columns A,B, and C which are your highest priority sorts.

Bye,
Jay

[Mark W.]

On 2002-04-25 10:45, lars wrote:
Is there a way to sort data by more than the three columns in the sort option....Lotus 123 had more fields to choose 5 years ago.

If you want to sort based on 5 columns just do it in 2 passes. For example, first sort on columns C, D and E. Next, sort on columns A and B. That's the same as sorting on columns A, B, C, D and E.

[lars]

That's the way i do it but I was hoping for something else.

Thanks for the advice

[Mark W.]

On 2002-04-25 11:16, lars wrote:
That's the way i do it but I was hoping for something else.

Thanks for the advice

If each of your columns contained the same data type you could also concatenate the 5 values together on each row and sort on that combined column. For example...

=A2&","&B2&","&C2&","&D2&","&E2

[ This Message was edited by: Mark W. on 2002-04-25 11:28 ]