Understanding Ascending and Descending Sorts

As you might expect from their names, ascending sorts are done such that values increase, while descending sorts result in values decreasing. How does this affect your actual data, however?

If you choose to do an ascending sort, Excel uses the following sorting order:

1. Number values, from least to greatest
2. Date and time values, from earliest to latest
3. Text values, numbers first, then alphabetically (1, 2, 3, a, b, c, and so on)
4. Logical values, FALSE, then TRUE
Error values

Descending is the opposite of ascending. No matter which order you choose, Excel always places blanks (empty fields) at the end of the final list.