Sorting on Month Alone

I have a sheet where Column B is an Internal date yet fomatted to display yyyy-mm. I have a 2nd Column C that is a Literal description of a product.

When I sort by Month (Column B) and by Description (Column C), the sheet is sorting by the Actual Date and therefore not grouping the product descriotion together. I tried inserting another column and formatting the data to yyyy-mm, but same results.

How can I sort by Month only and ignore the Actual Date?

July 27th, 2015 1:29pm

Re:  sort by month

Use the "custom list" option in the sort dialog box...
(before and after on the left & right)

'---
Jim Cone
Portland, Oregon USA
free & commercial excel programs  (n/a xl2013)
"Special Sort" excel add-in (30 ways to sort)
http://jmp.sh/K95N3ee



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July 27th, 2015 2:21pm

Thanks James. This makes the First Sort (Column D) work but not the second sort criteria which is MAKE in Column E. You can see below is it appears to still be sorting by the actual Internal Date instead of the value in Column D. This must be why becasue it is not sorting the Column E.

July 27th, 2015 2:41pm

Re:  custom sorting

Add a level in the sort dialog box.
Sort by the "make" column as the first sort (standard ascending).
Sort by "month" column as the second sort (custom list option).
'
Always make sure the complete data set is selected before sorting.
Sort columns in the order of least important to most important.
'---
Jim Cone
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 27th, 2015 3:04pm

Jim,

This solution didn't work. See below results...

As you can see, the Chryslers are grouped together but I am trying to determine By Month how many Chryslers, how many Fords, etc.. Using your Sort suggestion, it is putting the Chryslers together but not showing them grouped by month.

WHen I get this right, I want to get subtotals that show me how many Chryslers I sold in June, how many Fords, how many Mistsubishi's and then a total Unit Count for each of the months by MAKE.

Using your solution, I get the results at the top. I've included my Sort dialog box in case I am doing something wrong.

Thanks,

July 27th, 2015 4:45pm

Re:  still not sorted

I gave incorrect instuctions...
You should do two separate sorts the first sort by make and the second sort by month.
(using the entire data set each time)
'---
Jim Cone
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 27th, 2015 6:38pm

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