New in Excel 2007 - you can sort by cell color! Today's episode takes a look at the new Sort dialog in Excel 2007. You can sort by more than three levels, and also choose to sort by font color, cell color, or icon. Episode 406 shows you how.
This blog is the video netcast companion to the upcoming book, Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy. Download a new two minute video every Tuesday and Thursday to learn one of the tips from the book!
This blog is the video netcast companion to the upcoming book, Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy. Download a new two minute video every Tuesday and Thursday to learn one of the tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel podcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
It's a 2007 Tuesday, so we're going to talk about a new trick from Excel 2007.
Hey, this is fresh off the press, Special Edition “Using Microsoft Excel 2007”, spent most of 2006 writing this, it covers every single feature in Excel 2007.
We don't have any at the MrExcel store yet, but you can probably find it at Amazon, or soon at your local retailer, so check that out if you're thinking about Excel 2007.
Now today's trick, we're going to talk about how to sort, the Sort routine has completely changed in Excel 2007, including the really kind of bizarre feature of being able to Sort by Color.
So, if I choose the Sort button, that's on the Data ribbon, I can say that I want to sort by the Revenue field.
But then, instead of sorting on Values, I can say that I want to sort on cell color.
It gives me a choice of all the colors that it finds in that field, and so I can choose that, maybe I want the bright blue to be on top.
And then I'll add a level, Sort by Revenue, sort on Cell Color, and then I want the burgundy color to be next, and you can go ahead and do this.
Now, in the old Sort routine in Excel 2003, we were limited to only three sorts that you could do at a time, and now we can do as many different sorts as we want, it’s really cool.
Of course, it gets kind of tedious, doing the specifying every color, especially if you have a lot of different colors.
The Copy Level will make identical copies, so now you can go through and say we want green next, and then the light grey, and then Copy Level one more time.
And finally, which didn’t we use, the dark blue, there we go, click OK, and now our data is sorted with all of the colors at the top.
Great idea, when I first heard of this, I thought I was kind of crazy, but I realize now.
You know, a lot of people go through and they mark cells that they need to pay attention to, and now you can bring all of those cells to the top.
One quick trick is, if you only need to sort by one color, I have the original worksheet here, I’m going to select the cell with the bright blue.
I can right-click and say Sort, and then put selected cell color on top, and it'll bring all of the bright blue cells to the top.
Great new feature in Excel 2007.
Again, don't forget if you're thinking about going Excel 2007, a brand new book, Special Edition “Using Microsoft Excel 2007”, should be at Amazon now.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another podcast from MrExcel!
It's a 2007 Tuesday, so we're going to talk about a new trick from Excel 2007.
Hey, this is fresh off the press, Special Edition “Using Microsoft Excel 2007”, spent most of 2006 writing this, it covers every single feature in Excel 2007.
We don't have any at the MrExcel store yet, but you can probably find it at Amazon, or soon at your local retailer, so check that out if you're thinking about Excel 2007.
Now today's trick, we're going to talk about how to sort, the Sort routine has completely changed in Excel 2007, including the really kind of bizarre feature of being able to Sort by Color.
So, if I choose the Sort button, that's on the Data ribbon, I can say that I want to sort by the Revenue field.
But then, instead of sorting on Values, I can say that I want to sort on cell color.
It gives me a choice of all the colors that it finds in that field, and so I can choose that, maybe I want the bright blue to be on top.
And then I'll add a level, Sort by Revenue, sort on Cell Color, and then I want the burgundy color to be next, and you can go ahead and do this.
Now, in the old Sort routine in Excel 2003, we were limited to only three sorts that you could do at a time, and now we can do as many different sorts as we want, it’s really cool.
Of course, it gets kind of tedious, doing the specifying every color, especially if you have a lot of different colors.
The Copy Level will make identical copies, so now you can go through and say we want green next, and then the light grey, and then Copy Level one more time.
And finally, which didn’t we use, the dark blue, there we go, click OK, and now our data is sorted with all of the colors at the top.
Great idea, when I first heard of this, I thought I was kind of crazy, but I realize now.
You know, a lot of people go through and they mark cells that they need to pay attention to, and now you can bring all of those cells to the top.
One quick trick is, if you only need to sort by one color, I have the original worksheet here, I’m going to select the cell with the bright blue.
I can right-click and say Sort, and then put selected cell color on top, and it'll bring all of the bright blue cells to the top.
Great new feature in Excel 2007.
Again, don't forget if you're thinking about going Excel 2007, a brand new book, Special Edition “Using Microsoft Excel 2007”, should be at Amazon now.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another podcast from MrExcel!
