How I solved sorting in Google Sheets

I’m sharing my experience – hopefully it will help others.

I notice that many others had similar Google Sheets sorting problems. Maybe there are other/better ways, but here’s how I solved it.

I wanted to continually re-sort the output shown in my data viewer linked to Google Sheets after each new row was added to the database. I tried AirTable, but it was unable to handle my formulas based on arrays.

  1. I created another table in my Sheets database named “sorted”
  2. In this new table, I named the header row “sortedVALUE”
  3. Into cell A2 I entered the formula: =SORT(unsortedsheetname!A2:B39, 2, FALSE)
    The “2” means to sort on the second column, “FALSE” means to sort highest to lowest.
  4. Any time the data in the original range is updated, the sorted data in this new table will update as well.
  5. Next I linked the data viewer to the new table named “sorted”.
  6. Keep in mind this new table is only displaying data from an array. Any changes to data must be made to the original table.

Like others, I found that I must swipe down on the data viewer to get it to display the freshest version of the sorted data. I tried switching to an update screen, reloading the original page, and combining these options, but they did not work. Hoping Thunkable can fix this.

3 Likes

Great tip!

Try using the refresh block after each edit.
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