Sorting a Selection of Rows

To sort a selection of rows in a table, select the rows that you want to sort and either right click the selection and choose Sort, or click Sort on the main toolbar. This opens the Sort dialog box.

Figure: Sort Selected Rows

This dialog box sets the range that is sorted and the sorting criteria. The range is automatically selected depending on whether you sort an entire table or only a selection of its rows.

The Sort dialog box also allows you to apply the sorting operation to the entire table, using the All rows option.

The Criteria section specifies the sorting criteria (a maximum of three sorting criteria are available), defined by the following:

A name, which is collected from the column heading.
The type of the information that is sorted. You can choose between the following:
- Text - Alphanumeric characters.
- Numeric - Regular integer or floating point numbers are accepted.
- Date - Default date and time formats from the local OS are accepted (such as short, medium, long, full, xs:date, and xs:dateTime).
The sorting direction (either ascending or descending).

The sort criteria is automatically set to the column where the cursor is located at the time when the sorting operation is invoked.

After you finish configuring the options in the Sort dialog box, click OK to complete the sorting operation. If you want to revert to the initial order of your content, press Ctrl Z (Meta Z on OS X) on your keyboard.

Note: The sorting support takes the value of the xml:lang attribute into account and sorts the content in a natural order.

Sort Using Multiple Criteria

You can also sort an entire table or a selection of its rows based on multiple sorting criteria. To do so, enable the rest of boxes in the Criteria section of the Sort dialog box, configure the applicable items, and click OK to complete the sorting operation.

Figure: Sorting Based on Multiple Criteria