Sorting is one of Microsoft Excel's easiest tasks. Click; you're done! At least until you need to sort by multiple columns. For this sort task, you'll need a custom sort. Here's how.

To extract and sort non-adjacent arrays in your data, nest the CHOOSECOLS or CHOOSEROWS functions inside your SORT or SORTBY ...

SEE: How to use Find All to manipulate specific matching values in Excel (TechRepublic) Listing A shows a macro that automates the simple two-column sort that we ran in the last section.

Using Built-In Excel Functions Another way to split data into multiple columns is to use some of Microsoft Excel's functions. If you choose this route, remember that the split values will be ...