Sorting groups of rows by a cell in that group

Hello,
I am looking for a way of doing something which is beyond my ability and I hope you can help please. I will explain the overall task and where I have managed to get to.

I first want to group rows of data by one field within that row (I've got that far). Here is where I fall over so to speak....
I then want to sort those groups by one of the fields in that group.
To put it into context, I have rows of data which have a customer identification number and also a date field. There will be rows with the same customer number but different dates. I would like to group the rows by the customer number, but then sort the groups into chronological order of when that customer first appears in the spreadsheet.

I have included an example, column A is the customer identifier and column B is the date (there is also time in that field but I have found that the =MIN() function still finds the earliest date and time).
I'm sorry there is a lot of data but this way I can definately say that there are duplicate customers with different dates.
So to summarise, I would like the rows grouped by column A, and then those groups to be sorted by the earliest date that is in that group.

I hope that makes sense.

Many thanks in advance.

Sort using column A, then add a level and put column B. Then use Excel's Subtotal ability.All of these options can be found in the "Data" section of the ribbon.

You can also do a single sort by Date and then a second sort by the other field. This will do the same thing as levels of sort.

Hi cmyers & Marvin,

Thank you for you replies, both suggestions were sucessful for the sorting part.
cmyers - Thank you for suggesting the subtotal feature, I managed to group based on column A and then add a subtotal to column B using the MIN function to give the earliest date. I then managed to sort the groups by collapsing them and sorting the subtotals.

Thanks again, problem solved.

Here is yet another way if you need it

Hi Charlie,

Thanks, I really like that. Would you be able to explain the method so that I can replicate within different spreadsheets please. Also, if isn't too much trouble, possibly explain how it could be modified to select a date?

Many thanks again.

Take this sheet apart and use what you can and if I can help in the future just let me know.

Hi Charlie,
Thanks for the new sheet. I have been busy recently and not had much of a chance to explore it as yet but it seems to make sense.
Thank you again, you have been a great help