By now you've probably heard that spreadsheets are terrific tools for making lists, for using formats to communicate patterns or exceptions, and for organizing your work. For those of you who like to have your census research line up in rows and columns, it's a tool you can't live without. Today, we want to talk about how you might want to sort your work. Sorting is a great way to get a new look at old information.

Save Yourself
Before you think about sorting a worksheet, you should save it. That way, if the sort goes awry, you won't have to physically assault the next innocent person who walks by. Instead, you can calmly close the corrupted file and re-open the saved copy. Saving is lots more important that sorting--so let's keep our priorities straight. "Save once, sort twice," my grandmother used to say.

What Sort of Sort Can I Do?
Many people ask me about types of sorts. They stop me on the street and say, "Weird Al, I have a problem sorting in Excel." (I try to explain to them that I'm not Al Yankovich, but these people are not that well-adjusted to start with.) In Excel, you can do two kinds of sorts: Single Column and Multi Column. It is also possible to sort the columns by the values in a row, but we won't talk about that.

Single Column, Single Click
For a single column sort, you use the sort buttons on the standard toolbar. A-Z or Z-A mean sort ascending or descending. Just click once in the body of the worksheet area that you wish to sort, and then click the sort icon on the toolbar. Voila! Now aren't you glad you saved your work first! Often, I'll perform a variety of single column sorts, looking for patterns, or bad data. If I don't change any of the fields, I often will choose not to save the sheet after the sort. I can sort 'til I'm blue in the face and not lose any info.

For the single column sort, a really important concept is contiguity. That's right, CONTIGUITY. It means that things are touching, next to each other—and in Excel, it means that things are touching in a rectangular shape. That's important in the single column sort because what gets sorted is the column that the cursor is in—but the information for the rest of each row is kept together. So, for example, if you're sorting on City Name, that's all that sorts—but the people's names and addresses stay with the right cities. What happens when you sort on a single column, is that all of the CONTIGUOUS ROWS to the selected cell are sorted, and all of the CONTIGUOUS COLUMNS are kept with the row they belong to.

This could be important if you have added a row at the bottom where you keep a totals row, or on the right where you keep a totals column. These don't need to be sorted with the other info—it's better to insert a blank row or column between what you intend to sort and what you don't. That empty row or column acts as a boundary for the destruction you are about to wreak, so use this no-man's land approach to avoid smurfing up your totals formulas. You don't need to put a blank row between your column headings and your data—it's the other three sides that you want to insulate.

The Multiple Column Sort
Excel will sort multiple columns, even if they aren't next to each other. To accomplish this, first save your data. "Save not, sort not," my mother always says. Then use DATA/SORT and choose up to three columns that you would like to sort on. If you feel like you need to sort on more than three columns, you can do multiple sort passes, with the least important sorts first. For example, you might sort on First Name, and then do a multiple column sort on State, City, and Last Name. The First Names will be in order within last names in this case—because you already put them that way! Notice that you can sort any of your columns either ascending or descending—you can mix them up.

Sorting Addresses
Sorting address lists is great, because it lets you make the information consistent in one of the fastest ways possible. You can sort by city, spot the variations in the spelling of Albuquerque or Dallas, and use Copy and Paste to fix them. You can sort by state and then city, and fill in some missing zips. You can sort by address and see if you have variations in street names. Just sort by a column, scroll through it. Fix whatever jumps out at you. Sort by another column and repeat to suit.

Genealogy Tie-In
Sorting can help you recognize a pattern. It can also help you recognize information such as names that are close but don't exactly match. You can sort and re-sort a spreadsheet with a couple of clicks. Maybe you'll want to sort on first names, to look for naming patterns. Maybe you'll want to sort land records to see who lived near your ancestor. Or your society mailing list to spot missing zip codes, misspelled streets, and similar typos.

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A course at Iowa State Basic sorting techniques ***

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What Else?
Before you sort your data, create a new column and fill it with numbers. Sequential numbers. Like 1, 2, 3, and so on. I type the first two, select those cells, and then use the fill handle (that little black square at the bottom right-hand corner of the cell outline) to put in the rest by just dragging it down over the remainder of the column. Or you can just type them in. However you like to generate numbers, be sure to do it before you sort. That way, you can always put the spreadsheet back into its original order if necessary. You might not think that this is important. But then again, as Pat Hatcher once wrote, you might find that the church records that you are researching were kept by a minister who, when entering new members in the register, did the couples first and the single people second. This might help you recognize information that you didn't see before.

Beau Sharbrough is the president of GENTECH, the founder of the GENTECH and FGS Web sites, and a founder of the Lexicon Working Group. He would like to hear from you at beau@sharbrough.net, but due to the volume of e-mail received, he is unable to answer every e-mail message received. Please note that he cannot assist you with your individual computer problems. Visit Beau's Web site at: www.sharbrough.net/ for information about speaking engagements. Beau is the father of two college-age girls and is a proud graduate of Texas A&M University.