Safe sorting strategy

When working with large mailing lists, the worst fear is surely that the list will become corrupt because not all of the columns are sorted at once. Microsoft Excel will attempt to warn you if it appears you’re not sorting all the columns. But if you end up with an empty column in the middle it may only take everything up to that empty column and decide that the other stuff doesn’t matter.

One of the ways I avoid this is by highlighting my column headers in yellow. When I’m ready to sort, I shrink the size of the screen so that I can see at least one non-highlighted column to the right and I know I’ve included all the columns.

Remember, it’s possible to go back and get earlier versions of your file if things go wrong. Just look for, “Restore a previous version of a file without unwanted changes” in the help menu.