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Range.SortSpecial Method

  • Article
Excel Developer Reference

Uses East Asian sorting methods to sort the range, a PivotTable report, or uses the method for the active region if the range contains only one cell. For example, Japanese sorts in the order of the Kana syllabary.

Syntax

expression.SortSpecial(SortMethod, Key1, Order1, Type, Key2, Order2, Key3, Order3, Header, OrderCustom, MatchCase, Orientation, DataOption1, DataOption2, DataOption3)

expression   A variable that represents a Range object.

Parameters

Name Required/Optional Data Type Description
SortMethod Optional XlSortMethod The type of sort. Some of these constants may not be available to you, depending on the language support (U.S. English, for example) that you’ve selected or installed.
Key1 Optional Variant The first sort field, as either text (a PivotTable field or range name) or a Range object ("Dept" or Cells(1, 1), for example).
Order1 Optional XlSortOrder The sort order for the field or range specified in the Key1 argument.
Type Optional Variant Specifies which elements are to be sorted. Use this argument only when sorting PivotTable reports.
Key2 Optional Variant The second sort field, as either text (a PivotTable field or range name) or a Range object. If you omit this argument, there’s no second sort field. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
Order2 Optional XlSortOrder The sort order for the field or range specified in the Key2 argument. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
Key3 Optional Variant The third sort field, as either text (a range name) or a Range object. If you omit this argument, there’s no third sort field. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
Order3 Optional XlSortOrder The sort order for the field or range specified in the Key3 argument. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
Header Optional XlYesNoGuess Specifies whether or not the first row contains headers. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
OrderCustom Optional Variant This argument is a one-based integer offset to the list of custom sort orders. If you omit OrderCustom, (normal sort order) is used.
MatchCase Optional Variant True to do a case-sensitive sort; False to do a sort that’s not case sensitive. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
Orientation Optional XlSortOrientation The sort orientation.
DataOption1 Optional XlSortDataOption Specifies how to sort text in Key1. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
DataOption2 Optional XlSortDataOption Specifies how to sort text in Key2. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.
DataOption3 Optional XlSortDataOption Specifies how to sort text in Key3. Cannot be used when sorting PivotTable reports.

Return Value
Variant

Remarks

If no arguments are defined with the Sort method, Microsoft Excel will sort the selection, chosen to be sorted, in ascending order.

Example

This example sorts the range A1:A5 using Pin Yin (phonetic Chinese sort order for characters). In order to sort Chinese characters, this example assumes the user has Chinese language support for Microsoft Excel. Even without Chinese language support, Excel will default to sorting any numbers placed within the specified range for this example. This example assumes there is data contained in the range A1:A5.

Visual Basic for Applications 
  Sub SpecialSort()

Application.Range("A1:A5").<strong>SortSpecial</strong> SortMethod:=xlPinYin



End Sub

See Also