[Novalug] OT: sorting spreadsheet columns

Jim Ide jimsmaillists@yahoo.com
Wed Jul 2 00:49:40 EDT 2008


Spreadsheets are sometimes used as quick and dirty databases,
although they were probably not intended to be used this
way.  Many times, I have received emails with attached
spreadsheets containing team rosters, club members, etc.

Suppose you have a spreadsheet with the columns Last Name,
First Name, Address, etc., and you want to sort the rows
by Last Name.  If you click the Last Name column and select
Sort from the menu, only the Last Name column will be sorted,
and the other columns will remain unsorted.  This often
surprises/confuses new spreadsheet users.  If you want the
entire row to be sorted by Last Name, you must select the
entire range and *then* sort by Last Name.  It seems to me
(a database guy) that row-oriented database-style sorting
as the default behavior is more useful and intuitive than
column-oriented sorting, but I rarely use spreadsheets
and haven't had to solve a problem in which this behavior
would be helpful.  I asked several persons I consider to
be spreadsheet gurus why you would want this, and asked
them to give me an example of when sorting just one column
without disturbing the other columns would be useful,
but none could come up with an answer.

Any ideas?



      



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