How to sort or filter by color in Google Sheets

In 2020, Google added one of the most useful features to Google Sheets; ability to sort or filter by color.

This is something that users have been able to do in Microsoft Excel for a while. Having it available in Google Sheets means it’s even easier to migrate Excel sheets to an online spreadsheet.

If you’re wondering why you might want to sort or filter by color, consider a situation where you’ve set up conditional-based formatting. Sorting this way allows you to do things like sort alarms or rank by category or priority rather than based on individual numbers.

Sort by color in Google Sheets

Consider a spreadsheet with a list of student grades covering different ranges. In this worksheet, we have configured conditional based formatting to assign the appropriate color code to each layer range.

With a worksheet formatted this way, if you sort by column B, you will see the points sorted from A to B, but you won’t be able to clearly see which block of points makes up each group of letters.

The best way to do this is to sort by color.

To do this:

1. Select Data from the menu, select Filter viewthen choose Create a new filter view.

2. To sort the list with all the “A” points at the top, you can sort by Green. Select the filter icon at the top of the column, select Sort by coloroption Color, and then select the color you want to sort. In this case, choose a light green color.

3. The color you choose will be grouped and sorted at the top of the list.

You may have noticed that you can’t sort by all colors, and this makes sense, because colors have no order to sort by.

However, if you sort the column by number, the colors will also be sorted by their numerical range. The point of sort by color in Google Sheets is to quickly identify a group of items in a large list in a cell format (usually based on conditional formatting).

Filter by color in Google Sheets

Another approach to grouping items by their color is to use filtering. Google Sheets now lets you filter out all other colors except the one you’re interested in.

In larger lists, this is useful for grouping all the items you’re interested in while eliminating the clutter of all other data.

To do this, select the filter icon at the top of the column, select Filter by coloroption Color, and then select the color you want to filter. In this case it’s light green.

Once you’ve filtered by a color, you’ll see all the rows where the column you filtered is the color you selected is displayed. All other rows with a different color will be filtered out of view.

This is a useful way to focus on groups of data, eliminating anything else that might get in the way of your analysis.

Sorting or filtering by color in Google Sheets is a less granular approach than simple numerical sorting, but sometimes visualizing data in categories or groups like this is more valuable.

Sort by text color in Google Sheets

In the same way you can sort or filter cell colors in Google Sheets, you can do the same based on text color. This is useful for all of the reasons above, but you created conditional formatting for the text color, not the cell color.

To sort by text color:

1. Select Data from the menu, select Filter viewthen choose Create a new filter view.

2. To sort the list with all the “A” points at the top, you can sort by the Green text. Select the filter icon at the top of the column, select Sort by coloroption Color text, and then select the color you want to sort. In this case dark green.

3. The color you choose will be grouped and sorted at the top of the list.

Just like the fill sort, the text color you selected groups all the items with that text color at the top of the list. All items below that group remain unsorted.

Again, it’s a good way to focus on specific groups or categories of data. But if you really want to sort by number, you’ll need to sort by cell contents (numbers) as usual.

Filter by text color in Google Sheets

You can also filter out records with a different color, leaving only the group with the color you want. Again, this is useful with very long lists where you want to filter out all other values ​​that aren’t in the range or category you’re looking for.

To filter by text color:

1. Select Data from the menu, select Filter viewthen choose Create a new filter view.

2. To filter the list so that only “A” points are listed at the top, you can filter by the Green text. Select the filter icon at the top of the column, select Filter by coloroption Color text, and then select the color you want to sort. In this case, choose a dark green color.

3. The color you choose will be grouped and listed at the top without showing any other text colors.

This is especially useful for very long lists where you need to filter out “noise” (all other data), so you can focus only on the data that interests you.

Sort or filter by color in Google Sheets

Using the sort or filter functionality in Google Sheets based on color allows you to group and sort data. It is not like regular sorting or filtering because it does not organize data by rows, but instead by blocks of rows. It’s a great way to categorize and organize information in chunks.

It has its uses if you use it properly whenever you have conditional formatted data.