Contents

# Sort Options

Sets additional sorting options such as natural sorting, locale for sorting, handling columns boundaries, sort results location and more.

To access this command...

#### From the menu bar:

Choose Data - Sort - Options tab.

#### From the tabbed interface:

Choose Data - Sort - Options tab.

#### From toolbars:

Sort, then Options tab.

## Case sensitive

Sorting follows the collation rules of the document locale. In most Western locales, lowercase letters appear before uppercase letters, while in others, the order is reversed. For example, in the English (USA) locale, the order is 'a', 'A', 'b', 'B'. In the Danish locale, however, the order is 'A', 'a', 'B', 'b'.

LibreOffice uses collation rules based on the International Components for Unicode (ICU). For detailed collation information specific to your document locale, visit https://icu4c-demos.unicode.org/icu-bin/collation.html#legend.

For Asian locales: Check Case Sensitive to apply multi-level collation. With multi-level collation, entries are first compared in their primitive forms with their cases and diacritics ignored. If they evaluate as the same, their diacritics are taken into account for the second-level comparison. If they still evaluate as the same, their cases, character widths, and Japanese Kana difference are considered for the third-level comparison.

## Range contains row/column labels

Omits the first row or the first column in the selection from the sort. The Direction setting at the bottom of the dialog defines the name and function of this check box.

## Include formats

Preserves the current cell formatting.

## Enable natural sort

Natural sorting is an algorithm that orders string-prefixed numbers by their numerical value, rather than treating them as plain text for comparison.

Example: the series of values A1, A15, A9, A4, A5, A17, ..., A2, A13, A21 when sorted in natural order becomes

A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, ..., A19, A20, A21.

The same set of values not sorted naturally becomes

A1, A11, A12, A13, ..., A19, A2, A20, A21, A3, A4, A5, ..., A9.

### Recognize decimal separator

The decimal separator character, which varies by locale, when included in the number that follows the text, indicate that it is a decimal number. For example: A1.14, A1.2, A2.5, A10 (with a dot as the separator).

### Decimal separator as regular character

The decimal separator character, which varies by locale, does not indicate a decimal number when included in the following text; instead, it is treated as a regular character. For example, A1.14 contains character 'A', number 1, character '.' and number 14.

## Include boundary column(s)/row(s) containing only comments

Range boundary columns (for sorting rows) or boundary rows (for sorting columns) of a sorting range are not sorted by default if they are empty. Check this option if boundary columns or boundary rows containing comments are also to be sorted.

## Include boundary column(s)/row(s) containing only images

Border columns (for sorting rows) or border rows (for sorting columns) of a sorting area are not sorted by default if they are empty. Check this option if boundary columns or boundary rows containing images are also to be sorted.

## Copy sort results to:

Copies the sorted list to the cell range that you specify.

### Sort results (named ranges list)

Select a named cell range where you want to display the sorted list.

### Sort results (input box)

Enter the cell range where you want to display the sorted list.

## Custom sort order

Click here and then select the custom sort order that you want.

### Custom sort order list

Select the custom sort order that you want to apply. To define a custom sort order, choose LibreOffice - Preferences Tools - Options - LibreOffice Calc - Sort Lists.

## Locale

Select the locale for the sorting rules.

### Options

Select a sorting option for the locale. For example, select the "phonebook" option for German to include the umlaut special character in the sorting.

## Direction

### Top to Bottom (Sort Rows)

Sorts rows by the values in the active columns of the selected range.

### Left to Right (Sort Columns)

Sorts columns by the values in the active rows of the selected range.

Please support us!