Excel not sorting correctly

Question

I have been slowly building a database in a spreadsheet. I have had no problems for the last 3 months I have been building database. All of a sudden today I go into it and try to sort it and it is acting up. I click on column A and go to Sort and Filter on the dropdown choose custom sort. It brings up a box and I choose expand the selection then sort. On next box I click my data has headers. but my drop-down boxes are messed up. it acts as though my headers are now the next line down from my actual headers. say row 1 is my actual header it is acting as row 2 is my headers. those are showing up in my drop-down menu choices. How do I fix it to where my choices are correct again? Until I fix this, I have 2 choices either start from scratch and completely rebuild my database or completely freeze progress until I can fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It brings up a box and I choose expand the selection then sort.

There is nothing wrong with your database, it's simply the way you try to sort.

Within "unstructured" data, the Sort dialog guesses where the data is and if you have have headers or not.

Select only one cell anywhere inside your data, then try to sort. I guess all your issues are gone.

Consider also to format the data as Table, a Table preserves the last sort and you can reapply the sort next time. And it makes also clear where your data is (size, number of rows/columns) and you have headers and can easily load the data into Power Query / Pivot tables, and... many benefits.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-and-format-tables-e81aa349-b006-4f8a-9806-5af9df0ac664

Andreas.

Answer 2

I tried what you recommended, and it didn't help. still gave me same problem. Hopefully these can help show my problem. nothing personal just a fun project I have been working on, so I am not worried if people see what I have been working on.

Answer 3

figured it out.