Using the SORT and FILTER function in the same formula in Google Sheets

Key Takeaways

in this video i'm going to show you how to use the filter function and the sort function in google sheets first i'll show you how to use these functions individually and then i'll show you how to combine them in the same formula so first let's go over the filter function as you can see in columns a b and c we have data showing sales representatives and the amount of revenue that they earned and what we're going to do is filter this list so that we're only displaying the sales representatives who have earned more than ten thousand dollars so how we're going to do this is enter our filter function into cell e2 so i'm going to click on cell e2 and then i'm going to type equals filter parentheses to begin my filter function and then i'm going to specify the source range which contains the data that i want to filter which in this case is the range a2 through c15 and so i'm typing a2 colon c15 and then i'm going to type a comma and now i'm going to specify the criteria column which is the column that we're checking our criteria for and in this case the criteria column is column c so i'm going to type c2 colon c15 now i'm going to type a greater than sign and then type the number 10 000 then i'm going to press enter and so now we're displaying a filtered list of data that only displays the sales representatives who have earned more than ten thousand dollars and we've done this by using the filter function and what we've told google sheets with this function is to filter columns a through c where column c is greater than 10 000. so now let's go over the sort function in google sheets now we're going to sort the same set of data that we just filtered by using this sort function in cell e2 so i'm going to click on cell e2 and then i'm going to type equals sort parentheses to begin the sort function and just like in the filter function we're going to start by specifying our source range the range that contains the data that we want to sort which again is a2 through c15 and so i'm typing a2 colon c15 now i'm going to type a comma and i'm going to type the number 2 which indicates that i want to sort by the second column of the range that i specified then i'm going to type another comma and then i'm going to type true which indicates that i want to sort in ascending order true means ascending order and false means descending order so now i'm going to press enter so now i have a set of data that's sorted by the representative's name a b c d and so on and so again we're telling google sheets that we want to sort columns a through c by the second column in ascending order now let's go over how to use the sort function with the filter function in the same formula so here we have our filter function that we did earlier which again is filtering the data to only show the representatives who earned more than ten thousand dollars and what we're going to do is add a sort function to this formula in cell e2 so that our filtered list of results is also sorted by representative name so i'm going to click on cell e2 and then i'm going to drag my cursor into the formula bar so that i can edit the formula and so i'm going to click right after the equal sign and then i'm going to type sort parentheses now i'm going to drag my cursor and click at the very right of the formula and then type a comma to another comma and then true and so now we've combined the sort function with the filter function and when we press enter now our filtered results are sorted by representative name and so let's review what these formulas are doing one more time so again first we're telling google sheets to filter columns a through c where column c is greater than 10 000 and then we've wrapped the filter function in the sort function or in other words we've nested the filter function inside of the sort function and we've specified with our sort function that we want to sort by the second column in ascending order if you want to learn more about using the sort function and the filter function i've linked to both articles and videos below that show you both how to use the function individually as well as combined