I do IT work for a major corporation, and one of the most prominent misconceptions that I see in my coworkers is a confusion between the spreadsheet functions of SORT, and FILTER.

• To SORT a spreadsheet means to put the data in ascending or descending order, based on alphabetical or numerical values. A SORT changes the structure of the data, so the lines are in a different order according to the way they’re sorted.
• To FILTER a spreadsheet means to show only the data that fits a certain criteria; for instance you may want to show only the values that are less than or equal to 100, or you may want to show only the lines that have the ZIP code 55801. It’s important to know that filters DON’T reorder the underlying data like a SORT does. The data is still formatted the same way, it’s simply being displayed on screen according to your criteria.

For example, here’s a spreadsheet that contains Customers and ZIP codes. It’s unsorted;

unsorted spreadsheet

In order to effectively find customer Bob Badger, we’d need to look through the entire list. Not that complicated when it’s only 6 records, but what about when it’s 6000 records?

If we want Bob Badger’s record, we’ll need to sort on column A, Customer. In ASCENDING order (from lowest to highest), the spreadsheet would look like this;

sorted by customer

Now we can easily find Bob Badger.

But what if we wanted ALL customers in the 55801 ZIP code? Again, no big deal with 6 records. But with 6000, it would quite a chore looking them all up.

To find all customers in the 55801 ZIP code, a filter would be very helpful, and would cause our spreadsheet to look like this;

filtered for 55801

And now the spreadsheet shows only those records that meet our criteria; in this case the records that have ZIP code 55801. Again, it’s important to understand the underlying data has not been deleted. It’s still there. We’re only viewing a simplified picture of the data.

Being able to distinguish between these two methods, and when it’s most appropriate to use each, will put you miles ahead of your coworkers!

Do you have any Excel questions I can answer? Have I covered the subject adequately here? Let me know what you think!