(use a column that has a value in every row) In the column field, select the column you want to sort by Under the data tab, select the sort function If you have a lot of blank cells, columns, or rows, Select All may miss some data. Just be sure all of your data is highlighted prior to sorting. date from newest to oldest), you can sort the entire sheet and watch the completely blank rows fall off. If it makes sense to organize your data by a certain column, (i.e. Method #1: Sort them out.Įxcels column sort function wont order blank cells. In this series, we will describe different methods for cleaning data that have common problems such as blank rows, duplicates, multiple values in one column, data split into too many columns, leading zeroes, numbers that dont act like numbers, basic data recoding, and comparing two versions of a spreadsheet. Google Sheets and Excel are widely available and powerful tools for basic data cleaning of small to medium data sets. At Inciter, we use many tools to clean data.