Improved Way to Alphabetize a List Using SMALL()

Jim Hook

I have a project dashboard that links in data from several other sheets to show an overview of project financials and time charges. In a couple of cases I needed to sort the results by project number which includes four numerical characters, occasionally followed by a single alphabetical character, none of which I could count on being in alphabetical order as linked in. I found a way to turn each project number/letter into a unique number that was ready to sort into alphabetical order but that was where it got very difficult until just recently when the SMALL() and LARGE() functions were added to Smartsheet. What originally was taking up to an array of 100 rows by 100 columns to sort a list of 100 entries, with each cell including a simple IF() formula to sort the data, is now reduced to 100 simple SMALL() formulas each looking for the next larger value. The old alphabetizing sheet was right at the limit of what Smartsheet could handle but is now relatively small.

Thank you Smartsheet for these new functions!

Shaine Greenwood

Jim—this is a fantastic tip for other Smartsheeters. Glad you shared this with the community!