Microsoft Word 2010 Tutorials
Tables / Sort Table Data pt. 1
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Subtitles of the Movie (Microsoft Word 2010 / Tables / Sort Table Data pt. 1)
When you have data in a Word table, from time to time you'll need to sort that data into some sort of order. To do this, click inside the table to sort and from the Table Tools Layout Tab, select the Data Group and the Sort Button. This opens the Sort Dialog. Here you can select the column to sort by. We've got a column of first name, last name, company name, phone and credit limit and the reason why we're seeing the column names in this list here is because we've got a header row in the table and because this particular option is enabled. If we had no header row, then we'd be seeing just the column numbers. But our table has a header row so we should leave this selected. Not only does it make this list more easy to identify what it is that we're sorting on, but it also makes sure that the header row of the table won't be sorted so we won't find the name first name in alphabetical order somewhere. Selecting header row protect it from being sorted. I'm going to sort by company name so I'm going to select company name here from the list. The type as set as Text because the company name is a text column. Word is pretty good about setting the correct type and that ensures that the data is going to be correctly sorted. To sort the table, I'm just going to click OK. And you can see that the header row has been protected and now the table is sorted in order by company name. In some circumstances you may want to sort on multiple criteria. In this case we can sort on last name, which is the second column of the table and if two or more people share the same last name, well then we can sort in first name order so that they'll appear in alphabetical order by first name. To do this, we'll make sure that we're clicked inside the table and from the Table Tools Layout Tab, from the Data Group, we'll select the Sort Button. And this time we're going to sort firstly by last name so we sort everybody in last name order. And then and only then, if two or more people share the same last name, will they be sorted in first name order. Again, Word has made the correct selection for the type of data that we're sorting so all we need to do is to make sure we have header rows selected so that the first row of the table won't be sorted and click OK. Now our data has been sorted in order by last name and where two people share the same last name, in fact there are three here, they're sorted in alphabetical order. And here two the Jack's are sorted in alphabetical order. Whenever you sort data in a table, Word protects you against making mistakes such as sorting only part of the data in the table. Let's have a look at an example of this. I'm going to select another document. When we're sorting data in this table, we have to be really careful because we have two header rows that we need to protect and Word won't allow us to protect those header rows using the Sort Dialog. So if we're going to sort data in this table, we need to select just the data that we want to sort. Now, let's assume that we're about to make a really big mistake and we're going to select just the data in the first three columns of the table because they're the only ones that we're really concerned about in this sort. I'm going to choose Table Tools Layout Tab, select Data Group and the Sort Button. In this case I want to sort by order number and if there are multiple products within an order, I want those products to be in product number order. So let's select to sort by Column 2 and then by Column 3. Word again has made the correct choice of the kind of data that we're sorting. This time it's numerical data and we definitely want no header rows selected because we want to sort everything that we have selected. We consider that we made a really big mistake in not including these columns but let's click OK and see what happens. And the answer is that Word has protected us. It has seen that we're about to compromise the integrity of the data in our table by only sorting the first three columns and it's selected all of the data in all of the columns. Again, leaving out those two header rows because we don't want to sort them. So we have everything now sorted in order number and if there are multiple products within an order, such as in this order 10248, then they're sorted in product number. Word has taken care to make sure that we don't lose our data or destroy the data in our table by making an incorrect selection. What we should have done is selected all the data in all the rows of the table before we did the sort. Now, in most cases that's exactly the behavior you want Word to do. You want it to protect you from destroying your data but there are some situations, only occasional situations where you don't want Word to perform this type of protective behavior. Let's see an example.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Microsoft Word 2010 |
| Author: | Helen Bradley |
| SKU: | 34149 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-42-9 |
| Release Date: | 2010-08-05 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 119 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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