How can I make sure the whole sheet will sort when I apply a filter (rather than just the column I'm querying)?

Hello Chris,

Hope you enjoyed your Microsoft Excel course with BEST Training.
Thank you for your question regarding making sure the whole sheet will sort when applying a filter.

This is a good question, and one that is fortunately easy to answer. With the new versions of Excel, generally it will select the entire table that you are working with, provided that you put your cursor into the table before you activate the filter.

If you find that this is not the case, you can test to see what Excel will automatically select, and then make a choice to modify that before filtering.

The way to to do this is to put your cursor anywhere in the table, and the hold CTRL and press *. This will select the table that you are currently in. ( Also good for just generally selecting big tables!). If this selection is not what you want, then you can manually select the cells that you want to include in the filter.
If there is a break in the data, then Excel will not be able to determine that, and will leave any unconnected data out of the selection. For example, if you have data in columns A to D, and then none in E, with data starting in F, excel will not be able to automatically include all the fields - you need to manually select them.

I hope this resolves your question. If it has, please mark this question as resolved.

If you require further assistance, please reply to this post. Or perhaps you have another Microsoft Office question?

Have a great day.
Regards,

Richard
Microsoft Office Specialist Trainer