How to Sort By Multiple Columns in Google Sheets

Sorting data in Google Sheets is pretty straight forward.

You can sort a single column (alphabetically or based on the numeric value in ascending/descending order) or multiple columns (based on one of the columns).

But what if you have multiple columns and you want to sort more than one columns at the same time.

For example, suppose you have a dataset as shown below and you want to first sort based on the region and then based on the sales. This way, you would have all the records for each region together and within each region, the sales can be sorted from highest to lowest.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to sort by multiple columns in Google Sheets.

Let’s get started!

Sort by Multiple Columns In Google Sheets

Multi-level sorting can easily be done in Google (as it has in-built functionality to do this).

Below is the data set that I will use in this tutorial.

Here are the steps to sort by multiple columns in Google sheets:

1. Select the entire dataset (A1:C13 in this example)
2. Click the Data tab
3. Click on the Sort range option
4. In the ‘Sort range’ dialog box, click on the ‘Data has header row option’. No need to check this in case you don’t have a header row
5. In the Sort by drop-down, click on Region and the sort order as A –> Z
6. Click on ‘Add another sort column’ option
7. In the ‘then by’ drop-down, select Sales and the sort order as Z –> A (as we want the sorting from highest to lowest sale value)
8. Click on Sort

The above steps would sort the dataset first by the Region column (alphabetically in ascending order) and then each region data is then sorted using the sales value (highest to lowest).

In this example, I have shown you how to do this with two columns, but you can sort by more than two columns as well using the same steps. Just repeat steps 6 and 7 for more columns.

Pro Tip: In case you may need to revert back to original data, add an additional column (I call these helper columns) and have serial numbers in it (1 in the first cell, 2 in the cell below it and so on). When you want to revert to the original order, simply sort based on this helper column.

So this is how you can easily sort by multiple columns in Google Sheets.

Hope you found this tutorial useful!

Other Google Sheets tutorials you may find useful:

• How to Sort by Color in Google Sheets
• How to Sort in Google Sheets
• How to Sort by Date in Google Sheets (using Formula)
• How to Alphabetize in Google Sheets (Step-by-Step)
• Sort Horizontally in Google Sheets (Sort Columns Left to Right)
• How to Combine Cells in Google Sheets (using simple Formulas)
• How to Filter By Color in Google Sheets (Using a Formula)