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The video includes one marked screenshot from the English app, with illustrative diagrams for the other steps. English captions. Product menus may differ in your account.
A date can look right in Excel while still being stored as text. A text sort may put January 2026 ahead of October 2025. This practice uses five fictional orders. Your finish line is the exact oldest-to-newest ID order ORD-304, ORD-302, ORD-303, ORD-301, ORD-305, with each amount still on its own row.
Download the practice workbook and independent answer check. The date strings use U.S. month/day/year notation and this exercise assumes Excel interprets that format. Work on this fictional copy.
Prove the problem
- Open the Orders sheet. The imported date text is in B2:B6. D2:E6 is blank for your work.
- In the empty cell F2, enter
=ISNUMBER(B2). The practice input should return FALSE. Formatting B as Date alone does not prove the value was converted. - In D2, enter:
=DATEVALUE(B2)- Fill D2 through D6. Format D2:D6 as dates. If you first see serial numbers, that is expected: the date format changes their display.
- In E2, enter
=ISNUMBER(D2)and fill through E6. All five results should be TRUE. If DATEVALUE returns #VALUE!, do not sort yet. Check whether your Excel environment is interpreting the U.S. month/day/year text as intended.
Sort without breaking the records
- Select A1:E6, including the headers. In Excel for the web, choose Data → Custom Sort, keep My data has headers selected, set Column to Converted date, and choose Sort Ascending (oldest to newest). Selecting only D would separate dates from IDs and amounts.
- Compare the five complete rows with the answer check. The amount total remains $635.
Why this works
Microsoft explains that imported or pasted dates may remain text and recommends DATEVALUE for many text-date formats. DATEVALUE returns a number Excel recognizes as a date. Date sorting depends on actual date values, not their visual formatting. For another locale or a mixed-format production file, inspect the source pattern before converting a whole column.
FAQ
Why not just choose Short Date for column B? Number formatting changes how a stored value is displayed; it does not reliably convert a text string into a date serial number.
Why use a helper column? It preserves the original imported text while you verify every conversion and maintain the association between IDs, dates, and amounts.
Do I need to paste values back over B? No. The practice is complete once D contains verified date values and the full table sorts correctly. In real work, decide whether to keep or replace the source only after checking downstream formulas.
Source and visual note
Vendor guidance checked 12 October 2026. The workbook cell types and fictional expected order were checked locally. The DATEVALUE, ISNUMBER, Short Date, fill-down, and whole-table Custom Sort steps were also tested on a private copy in Excel for the web with an English interface on 12 October 2026. The final sorted table is shown in one cropped, genuine English Excel capture of fictional data; the other on-screen app panels are labelled illustrative diagrams.
Practice downloads.
The exercise files contain invented information. Save a local copy before editing.