It is extremely difficult to sort summary values in Excel, as the groups in an Excel spreadsheet are isolated from each other. In Excel, users can select a batch of data and sort them, but they cannot sort data that are scattered over different groups. A great deal of manual work is needed to fully realize the operation.
esCalc is expert at handling the problem. For example, sort the products sold by each salesperson by sales amount in descending order in order to see which product each of them sells best. The data are as follows:
There are hundreds of salespersons in the sheet. Each of them sells dozens of products, and each product has multiple sales records. The data in column D are summary values. Now we need to sort these values in descending order.
The method esCalc uses is simple, that is, right click on column D and select Desc, as shown in the following figure:
The following figure shows the sorted summary values:
Only one step to complete the sorting as required. Now check the data of the second salesperson:
It’s right! So it is really quite easy to solve this problem with esCalc.
In Excel, one can only sort the data of one salesperson each time. A lot of work is needed to sort the data of hundreds of salespersons. A macro script can be used to save time, but unfortunately, typical users of Excel are business workers who haven’t any technical background and cannot perform the highly difficult job.
Besides Excel, other spreadsheet services like LibreOffice Cal and OpenOffice Calc also provides no better solution to the problem.