In an ascending sort, Microsoft Office Excel uses the following order. In a descending sort, this sort order is reversed.

Value Comment
Numbers Numbers are sorted from the smallest negative number to the largest positive number.
Dates Dates are sorted from the earliest date to the latest date.
Text Alphanumeric text is sorted left to right, character by character. For example, if a cell contains the text "A100," Excel places the cell after a cell that contains the entry "A1" and before a cell that contains the entry "A11."

Text and text that includes numbers stored as text are sorted in the following order:

  • 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (space) ! " # $ % & ( ) *, . / : ; ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~ + < = > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
  • Apostrophes (') and hyphens (-) are ignored, with one exception: If two text strings are the same except for a hyphen, the text with the hyphen is sorted last.

Note If you have changed the default sort order to be case-sensitive through the Sort Options dialog box, then the order for alphabetic characters is the following: a A b B c C d D e E f F g G h H i I j J k K l L m M n N o O p P q Q r R s S t T u U v V w W x X y Y z Z

Logical In logical values, FALSE is placed before TRUE.
Error All error values, such as #NUM! and #REF!, are equal.
Blank cells In both an ascending and descending sort, blank cells are always placed last.

Note A blank cell is an empty cell and is different than a cell with one or more space characters.