How to Alphabetize in Google Sheets

How to Alphabetize in Google Sheets

There are three different ways to sort your data alphabetically: with the help of the sort option, filter in the menu, and sort function.

Alphabetize Data Using the Sort Function in the Menu

  1. Select the data you want to sort
  2. Menu->Data->Sort Sheet


Here when we select Sort by column X(A-Z) or Sort by column X(Z-A), it will sort with the title. So we need to undo what we just did and freeze the header first.

For this:

  1. Choose Menu->View->Freeze-> ‘1 row’ or ‘Up to row 1’
  2. After freezing the first row, we can now do the same again.

You can reach the detailed article about line freezing here->"How to freeze rows and columns in Google Sheets?"

Sort Alphabetically With Right-Click

  1. Select the data you want to sort
  2. Right-Click
  3. Sort sheet A-Z or Z-A

When we select Sort by column X(A-Z) or Sort by column X(Z-A), it will sort with the title. So we need to undo what we did and freeze the header first.

For this:

  1. Choose Menu->View->Freeze-> ‘1 row’ or ‘Up to row 1’
  2. After freezing the first row, we can now do the same again.

How to Sort Alphabetically with Filtering using the menu?

  1. Click on a cell
  2. Menu-> Data-> Create a filter

After the filtering process, click on the boxes in the upper left and perform the sorting operation.

How to Sort Alphabetically With Filtering Using Toolbar

  1. Click on a cell
  2. Click on the ‘filter icon’ in the toolbar

That's it! We can sort A-Z or Z-A as we want.

Alphabetize Data Using SORT Function in Formula Bar

You can do the sorting from the menu, by filtering, or by using a function. All you should do is to come to the function bar and do  =SORT( range, X, TRUE or FALSE). Please don’t forget ‘=’.

  • range: the range that you want to sort. Select the columns here that you want to sort
  • sort_column(X): The column which you want to sort. In this example 7th column.
  • is_ascending: TRUE if you want the sorting to be ascending and FALSE if you want it to be descending.