[Novalug] OT: sorting spreadsheet columns

[Jon LaBadie]

On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 09:49:40PM -0700, Jim Ide wrote:
> Spreadsheets are sometimes used as quick and dirty databases,
> although they were probably not intended to be used this
> way.  Many times, I have received emails with attached
> spreadsheets containing team rosters, club members, etc.
> 
> Suppose you have a spreadsheet with the columns Last Name,
> First Name, Address, etc., and you want to sort the rows
> by Last Name.  If you click the Last Name column and select
> Sort from the menu, only the Last Name column will be sorted,
> and the other columns will remain unsorted.  This often
> surprises/confuses new spreadsheet users.  If you want the
> entire row to be sorted by Last Name, you must select the
> entire range and *then* sort by Last Name.  It seems to me
> (a database guy) that row-oriented database-style sorting
> as the default behavior is more useful and intuitive than
> column-oriented sorting, but I rarely use spreadsheets
> and haven't had to solve a problem in which this behavior
> would be helpful.  I asked several persons I consider to
> be spreadsheet gurus why you would want this, and asked
> them to give me an example of when sorting just one column
> without disturbing the other columns would be useful,
> but none could come up with an answer.
> 
> Any ideas?

I'm not a big spreadsheet person.  But I think the key to
why it is designed that way is in your opening description:
"If you click the Last Name column".

In doing this operation you have selected the data to be
operated upon.  The behavior of sort is consistant with
most (all?) other operations after such a selection.  To
make sorting's behavior unique would be totally inconsistant.

You probably are aware that you can select sort from the tool
menu and specify the column to use as the primary sort key.
This easily allows record style sorting.


-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon at jgcomp.com
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