Excel Sort Limit

Question

Morning All (from the UK)

I have a user with an excel sheet with 27320 rows and 16 columns, it wont sort a column into numerical order past 10,000. The column is formatted to number, they are are so getting a smart tag warning that the cell contains numbers but the format is general, even though the formatting is number, they have tried general format as well but that is giving the same result.

As the pop up suggests is it as simple as it cant sort past 10,0000 rows??

![](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/302e913a-5609-4265-9411-db67fb8a9b45?platform=QnA

Answer 1

I can't sort past 10,000 rows when I password protect the worksheet. Do you know if there's a way around that limit?

Answer 2

I found another community post with a solution that seems to have worked for me - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/protect-sheet-but-allow-sorting/aa87371b-20b2-4ede-b00a-aa914d4d2efb.

Answer 3

That message means that the filter drop down will not display all distinct values, only 10,000 of them.

There is no limit on the number of rows or columns that can be sorted, except if your computer runs out of memory. I was able to sort a range with a million of rows and twenty columns without problem