# Microsoft Office Application Help - Excel Help forum > Excel Charting & Pivots >  > [SOLVED] Sipmle pivot table won't sort

## bristly

Hi,
I have a simple pivot table:

*source data*
ID	name	date
1	name1	12.1.2013
2	name2	14.1.2013
3	name3	13.1.2013

My Pivot table is only meant for sorting (filetring etc.) the data according to the date. There are no "values".

*Desired result*
ID	name	date
1	name1	12.1.2013
3	name3	13.1.2013
2	name2	14.1.2013

But it won't work. The button indicates a sorted column, but the order is still 1,2,3 instead of 1,3,2.

The source data "date" column is formatted as date.
Excel 2010.

Thanks for any suggestions.

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## JosephP

move the date column to the first field?

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## Richard Buttrey

Hi,

Is it an option to move the Date field to be the first item in the PT Row labels?

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## dilipandey

HI Bristly,

Suggest you to look into below thread to get an idea.. thanks.


http://www.excelforum.com/excel-gene...el-2007-a.html


Regards,
DILIPandey
<click on below *** if this helps>

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## bristly

I moved the column and it worked! I don't get the logic behind this, but I don't care.
Thank you guys!

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## dilipandey

As per my observation, any pivot column sorting depends on left column  :Smilie: 

Regards,
DILIPandey
<click on below *** if this helps>

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## bristly

Ok, this logic is simple  :Smilie: . But not really obvious. I mean, the sort option should be grayed-out in other columns. Or rather should not (current state) and should sort  :Smilie: .

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## dilipandey

This can be a Nice feedback to Microsoft...  I hope this thread will be looked by some one from Excel Development team  :Wink: 


Regards,
DILIPandey
<click on below *** if this helps>

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## JosephP

won't happen-makes no sense if you think about what a pivot table does. you can only sort fields *within their parent fields* otherwise the grouping and aggregation which is the only purpose of a pivot table would not work properly

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## bristly

1) Of course, some sort combinations do not make sense. But then I'd expect the PT to make the rules more obvious. Columns sholudn't be marked as sorted if there is something preventig them from sorting. The blocking should rather be overriden by the latter choice or somehow explictely reffered to, so that it can be removed manually.

2) In my case I use the PT as dynamic table of ten bigest clients sorted according various parametres. It may not be what PT were intended for, but I think it's a clear solution. I think, it wouldn't do any harm to the original PT purpose if such a top 10 table was arbitrarily soratble.

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## JosephP

but you _can_ sort subordinate fields within the parent fields so it doesn't make sense to block the sorting options. nor can you really expect pivot table behavior to alter based on how _you_ are using it ;-)

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## dilipandey

Hi bristly, I already said :- 



> This can be a Nice feedback to Microsoft... I hope this thread will be looked by some one from Excel Development team



 :Smilie: 

Regards,
DILIPandey
<click on below *** if this helps>

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## bristly

You're right. In my case the date column actually _was_ sorted, only within the parent field. I didn't tealize that. My bad. And my apologies to PT logic  :Smilie: . Thanks.

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