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How to sort in Google Sheets, and who else sees your filter

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 5 September 2026 · 9 min read

There are two answers to how to sort in google sheets and they behave differently. Right-clicking a column letter sorts the entire sheet; Data › Sort range sorts what you highlighted. Choosing the wrong one is how a header row ends up filed under H, and it is the same accident the Excel guide is about — but the thing that prevents it here is not the same thing.

The practical consequence is a habit rather than a setting. On a spreadsheet other people open, filtering to look at something and leaving it on is not a private act — it changes what the next person finds. Before filtering a shared sheet it is worth deciding whether you are answering a question for yourself, in which case a copy is cheaper, or changing the sheet for everybody, in which case say so.

That list is also the answer to a question this guide did not set out to answer. Merged cells are usually discussed as a formatting preference — the Excel guide on merging argues against them from Microsoft’s documentation, which says the merge deletes what was in the other cells. Google publishes nothing about that, but it does publish this: merge cells and the filter button stops working. Two companies, two different arguments against the same choice, and both of them documented.

One last thing about sorting by colour, because it is the only route with a stated limit. It runs through the filter — Data › Create a filter, then the Filter control at the top of the range — so everything above about filters being shared applies to it as well. And Google draws a line inside it: “You can sort by conditional formatting colors, but not alternating colors.” The banded stripes that make a long table readable are decoration to Sheets, and a colour that came from a rule is data.

Not covered here. It will not tell you a filter is private. Google says the opposite in one sentence, and that sentence is the most useful thing on this page.

It will not repeat the Excel argument against merged cells. The two companies object to them for different documented reasons, and only Google’s belongs here.

And it will not promise sorting by colour covers every colour. Google draws the line at alternating colours, and this guide draws it in the same place. What holds instead is simple: the two sorting routes, the instruction to freeze a header row, the shared and saved nature of filters, the four causes of an unavailable filter and the limit on sorting by colour are quoted from Google’s own Docs Editors help, listed below with the date it was read.