Hello. I've been trying to figure out a way to create a container around multiple cells to allow them to be sorted by the content in the top-left corner of the container. The image below shows a sample of what I'd like to sort (by column A) and the end result that I'm looking for. Is there anyway to do this without adding a unique number to another column for each group of items (IE set D1= 1, D2 = 1, D3 = 2, D4 = 3, D5 = 4, D6 = 4)?

I am using Office 2010 on a Windows 7 Pro computer.

• Edited by tuxOnWindows Wednesday, September 09, 2015 2:44 PM Image was removed from the post.

Sorry about that, not sure why TechNet won't show my images. I've sent an email with the subject "TechNet: Create Containers around multiple cells" that includes them.

I don't believe advanced filtering will work for what I need because I'd like to be able to see everything in the spreadsheet at the same time, just sorted by a [priority] number that I assign it.

Thanks,

Brian

Hi Brian,

Please refer to following pictures:

1. Select Colum A and Click Ctrl+G, you will see the Go To dialog box, then select Special option.

2. Select Blanks option as shown in the following figure, then click OK.

3. Enter function =A1 on Cell A2, Then Click Ctrl+Enter. You will find the Blank cells will fill with data as shown in the following figure.

4. Sort Column A Smallest to Largest.

I suppose this would be a workaround for you to solve your issue.

Hope it's helpful.

Regards,

Emi Zhang
TechNet Community Su

Thanks but I should've made a better sample spreadsheet. I'm using column A to assign a priority level to each task, so Task A, B, & D may all be assigned a 1. I guess I could use column D to assign a unique identifier to each group of tasks and do a custom sort of the list by column A then column D, but I'd have to assign a priority level to each Subtask for it to work. It may just be easier to manually sort the list for now.

Thank you for your help.