Sorting the Data
Note: For help with these instructions see the image above. Click on image to enlarge it.
Before subtotals can be applied, your data must be grouped by the column of data you want to extract information from.
This grouping is done using Excel's Sort feature.
In this tutorial we want to find the lowest number of orders per sales region so the data must be sorted by the Region column heading.
Sorting the Data by Sales Region
- Drag select cells A2 to D12 to highlight them. Be sure not to include the title in row one in your selection.
- Click on the Data tab of the ribbon.
- Click on the Sort button located in the center of the data ribbon to open the Sort dialog box.
- Choose Sort by Region from the drop down list under the Column heading in the dialog box.
- Make sure that My data has headers is checked off in the top right corner of the dialog box.
- Click OK.
- The data in cells A3 to D12 should be now sorted alphabetically by the second column Region. The data for the three sales reps from the East region should be listed first, followed by North, then South, and last the West region.
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