I received a question today on how to sort a list of strings which was actually rather simple to accomplish.

The following list is the original sorting:

• caca
• cocacola
• ca
• cacacacacola
• c
• cacacacacacacaac
• cacaa

The requested list after sorting should look like this:

• c
• ca
• caca
• cacaa
• cocacola
• cacacacacola
• cacacacacacacaac

What I first did was to create a separate column to contain the length of each cell. There is a function in Excel which easily calculates the length of a string: LEN(). Now I had two columns, the first unsorted string column and the second length (of the first column string) column. As you probably have realised by now it was a simple matter of sorting the second column instead of the first for the strings to sort by length.

If interested in seeing it I have attached the test sheet for you to play around with:

Length String Sorting

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