Excel Won't Sort Dates Correctly - The Solution! 

Sir, You will be remembered till my death. It took 7 minutes to understand this. Thank you so much.

This has been driving me insane, forever. Thank you, not only for the solution, but the tempo and explanation was great.😊👏

YOU'RE OUT HERE SAVING LIVES!!!!!!!!!!

What an incredibly useful video. Man, I searched forever for thaat answer. Great work.

Completely useful and what enormous frustration you cured with very straightforward and easy to follow steps with no added filler. Thanks!

Very impressed! It was exactly what you described. It was recognise as text. Changed via 'text to column' and it worked. thank you

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much.

Wow, it's rare to find a video that actually fixes stuff on Excel, and yours did. Thanks man!

Saved me about four days' work on my master's thesis. Thank you!

This video has solved an long-term, ongoing nightmare for me, so thank you very, very much! However, I wonder if you can help with another sorting issue. Since Excel doesn't recognize dates prior to Jan 1 1900, what's the best way to format dates prior to that time? I think it will sort correctly if I enter the data as text this way yyyy-mm-dd, (for example 1888-12-01), but I'm not sure how to create that format. Thanks!

Legend been trying to sort this for so long!

Thank you for sharing. It was driving me crazy trying to figure it out.

This is the first of like 15 different sites and videos that did this properly. Everyone else took the easy way out by only having one year. Thank you for explaining this properly!

I've seen this problem with client's files that were created by exporting from a data base. The other way to create this problem is when you enter your dates not like they've been set up in your computer's preferences. Either way, it's probably not Excel's fault. The fact that the cells were aligned to the left and that sorting suggested A to Z were immediate giveaways. I would've used flash fill to solve the problem which is a bit easier but you need Excel 2013 or newer.

My god, I hate Excel SO MUCH. Why does this error even exist? I set my column do Date format before I entered any data and STILL I had this problem. It makes no sense! That aside - thank you! Life saver.

Great tutorial. Crystal clear; but unfortunately when I hit 'finish' at the end of the 'Text To Columns' process my dates all become 'hash' marks. Tried several times but no luck. Any ideas, please?

After trying to figure this out for 3 hours I am so happy that I found your video! Thanks mate!

Thank you so much, this is exactly what I needed !!!

I love you. I saw someone type out these instructions and when I followed them they didn't work. That person never specified to deselect things in the delimiter column. Anyway, when my dates moved to the right I gasped so loud that I scared my cat. It has been DAYS since I started working on this spreadsheet and I was about to give up and just deal with them unsorted

Excellent, I have been struggling for solution with this problem . Consulted with my colleagues but in vain, Problem solved with your suggestion . So great of you. Thank You

Thank you so much for this tutorial. I have been battling with sorting my accounts. Now I finally can complete them

Awesome !!! This Video Helped me a Lot , Thank You So Much

Thanks for this fix. I refer to it every year when preparing my books to take to my accountant. I have usually forgotten the correction method by then. Your explanations are lucid and your voice timbre easy on the ear. Thank you. We tech-blockheads need people like you!

Great. Thanks a lot. Very helping video. I was stuck on this but in few minutes resolved.

More than 3 years later and this video is still relevant. Thank you so much for this! I've been racking my brains out for a solution! This solved my problem!

Thanks a lot. But was there a leading apostrophe in dates ??? If not, so how can we type date , left aligned ??? Please reply

Such a simple ,clear and understandable video. Thank you so much.

This is the first video that actually helped me and I’m in the US! It was the text to columns that I needed to fix. Thank you!!!! 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾

You are a genius my friend...thank you SO MUCH for giving clear instructions on how to solve this very annoying issue

I watch multiple videos before coming here all in vain.. thanks for the superquick solution. Appreciated!!

Really helpful and fixed my issue which I spent hours looking through youtube without luck. Thanks a lot.

Thanks! this is exactly what I needed. In may case "tab" was selected. I just deselected it.

Thank you! This video sorted my issue! The big secret was just to make sure none of the delimiters were selected in the Text To Column dialog box and that when you select the date there you select WHAT IT CURRENTLY IS, rather than WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE, as I had been doing, as you change it to what you want it to be after it's properly formatted as date. Thank you again!!

Thank you so much , it was really giving me trouble . I am glad that I found your video !!

You're the Best! Like many others, I've spent at least an hour trying to find out how to fix the problem. Project for work is now complete thanks to you.

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation. Your video help me lot !!

Oh my goodness!!! You are simply HEAVEN SENT!!!! This fixed up an error in my database in seconds. Thou art AWESOME!!!!

lets say i have an excel file having date values : 2/1/1970 7/1/1970 8/1/1970 10/1/1970 11/1/1970 //this is in date format mm/dd/yyyy 15-01-1970 15-01-1970 16-01-1970 //but having this date in text format,but i want it in date format mm/dd/yyyy . i have tried using method from this video reference but didnt work,any suggestion??

Thank you very much! You are a time-saver 👍

YOU SAVE MY DAY THANKS

Thanks Brother for solving my problem. 😊😊

Hi i have problem on my application for job.It's says date should be in format DD.MM.YYYY, and i put dates like that expl: 21.10.2019 and it's says following requires your attention.Can u help pleasee

thank you so frustrating not to be able to do, clear and concise instruction really useful

Very very useful sir! Thank you so much

THANK YOU! This was driving me crazy!

Thank you very much Man after 8 years of uploading this video :). really helped.

Thank you!! Thank you!!! You made this easy to understand and it worked!!!

Thank you so much.... i almost went to the looney bin with this problem

Thank you so much. I just happened to stumble upon this video and channel. I was trying to find a solution for this for past few months and finally given and used power query to solve , which I always felt an overkill for simple issue.

Good thing I found this! My problem is all sorted out!

Bless you! I have been tearing my hair out over this for an hour. The Microsoft Tech Help had NO idea how to sort it. I had my suspicions that it was some kind of bug. I could not believe that Excel designers had just decided to do away with such a useful function. The alignment (left instead of right) of the dates is the giveaway. Although, how I shall remember how to solve it next time I need to do it ... You explain it clearly, but an ordinary user would never think of such a thing.

I spend a day tackle this problem. This video helps to solve my problem quickly. Thanks for uploading awesome solution.

Wow! A video that actually solved my problem, easily and quickly. Thank you!!

I can’t believe I spent so long trying to sort this before seeing this video! Fantastic tutorial! Thx

Thanks for the detailed information sir ji

You solved my problem. Thank you very much!

Thank GOODNESSS for this video! I was losing my mind! Thank you!!!

Thanks a lot. Superb explanation and helpful.

This video save my life!!!!!!!!!! EXTREMELY HELPFUL!!!!!!!! Thank you so much!

Thank you. This video was really helpful after I had been struggling for the past two days😅

I'm still not able to sort my dates. I have a format of m/yy, the =istext says it's False. But the Year doesn't sort correctly. Any ideas?

Thank u so much for this video. It is so useful.

Awesome video. Thanks for the great info.

Excellent! Never would have gotten this without this video. Mine is properly ordered by date now.

Brilliant fix! Thank you so much.

thank you sooo much really celebrated that

Thank you this is what I exactly looking for

Thank you, I was going crazy trying to figure out why my dates were sorting by months and years! And now I have the new tool of knowing when to check if the field is True or False for text!

Thanks alot sorting formula in my excel is not workings but this trick help alot❤

Thank you very much. Solved my issue!

Thanks, this has been bugging me the past couple of hours, trying to format older excels

OMG.. this is really helpful... Thanks a lot.

Have spent ages trying to find out why this wasn't working - thank you SO much for this video! 🙂

This video is very well explained.Thank you so much for the help😀

I have struggled with this for three days - I got the solution from you in a couple of minutes but watched the whole thing anyway! I was using the text to coloums but not removing all the qualifiers! Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, life changer! Thank you!

Thank you a million times.

Thank you sir. Grateful. ❤️

Thank you very much! I have been trying to format some date in my file for days which has left me frustrated until I came across this video. Very straightforward.

very well explained.. you solved my problem as well.. thanks for this vdo 👍

After so many effort I found this video and it's really works .Thanks a loooot👍

Thank you!! took me forever to weed through all the non helpful instructions.

YOU ARE AN ANGEL!!!!! THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!

Life Saver thank you so much!

Thanks a ton. This is super helpful. Thanks again

Awesome, googling for half an hour didn't give me a solution, this video hit the spot!

Thank you so much!! It worked.

I just had a hard time where it was swapping days and months around. After half a day I realised that everytime I was creating a new SHEET, It would default to American Date and not Australian where I'm from. Arrrgh

Thank for the info. please how do i change a long sheet of date in dd/mm/yy format to mm/dd/yy format

Thank you so much, this fixed the issue.

So useful! Thank you for the video!

Hi, I have followed both of your videos and my dates are still not responding correctly! they are apparently in date format, not right aligned though and a mixture of true and false when checking with the formula. Using the text to columns, I get different options and randomly selecting did not help. I set the date format before I even started entering data to avoid this but now my family history dates are unsortable by me- any ideas?

These are 8 minutes very well spended, thank you very much man :) I wanted to ask in merit of the sorting, does the other data connected to the dates get sorted as well?

You are the best thing that happened to me this day! I have been trying to figure out this for ages!!!! Was about to go crazy! Thank you from Argentina!!! God bless you!!!

It worked for me, thanks to your easy steps I’ve managed to avoid big chaos in a report. This saved my day.

I am very new novice in excel, i made one randomly generated list of dates between 2 dates, ( one and half year total ), but when i sort the dates it is a bit sorted but not exactly and precisely and having wrong dates in between.. i tried this method it wont working at all

thanks a lot . i think i fgured it out. its the problem with the erp system that changes the date into something else.

Oh my goodness, this was exactly what I've been trying to do and it's been so frustrating trying to get this to work. Thank you so much for sharing this!!!

Thanks for the video! 🙌🏾

Thank you. The explanation was what I needed after several searches