This tip is from Michelle Rosenberg, for Oshkosh ILL staff. But, I thought it would apply for others as well.

AutoFilter allows you to easily sort all field of your spreadsheet.

Highlight the header row:

From the menu choose Data, then Filter, then click AutoFilter.

You will now see arrows in the right of each of the column headers

Clicking on the arrow gives you the ability to sort in ascending or descending order based on the information in that column. (in the example below we could sort by author, title, series, etc.)

Here are the results after doing a Sort Ascending in the Title column. Note that all fields have sorted. Also note that the word "the" is not ignored when sorting. If you want a truly alphabetical sort leave off the leading a, an, or the.

You can also sort by a value in a column. Selecting a value from the list displays only those rows that have that value. The AutoFilter arrow also turns blue to indicate that the range is filtered.

Here I have sorted the Author column by Bernhardt, William. Note that only those rows containing Bernhardt, William in the Author column are displaying and the AutoFilter arrow in the Author column is now blue.

To restore all of your data to the spreadsheet, click on the AutoFilter arrow and choose All from the list.