How to Sort by Color in Google Sheets

When working with Google Sheets, you often have files with cells or fonts in different colours. Sorting by the cell colour or the font colour is not the built-in feature in Google Sheets now, although it is in Microsoft Excel. However, you can use the free add-on called "Sort Range Plus" to sort easily. You can sort the data range based on the value, the cell colour, the font colour, and the font size. Please see below how to get the add-on and how to sort by the cell colour.

1. To getting Add-on

Step 1: Click the "Add-ons" tab from the ribbon and click "Get add-ons" from the drop-down list;

Step 2: In the add-ons page, type "sort" in the search box;

Step 3: The add-on "Sort Range Plus" should come on the top of the list;

Step 4: Click and install the add-on following the steps, please makes sure you select the proper account if you have multiple Google account logged in;

2. To Sort by Color

Step 5: Select the data range with the cell colour or the font colour;

Step 6: Click the "Add-ons" tab from the ribbon again, click "Sort Range Plus" from the list and select "Sort Range";

Step 7: In the new dialogue box, select "Cell Color" and the column you want to sort (e.g., column A);

Step 8: Click the "Sort" button at the bottom, and the cells with the same colour will move to the top.

Sort by the cell colour or the font colour is very useful in identifying duplicates in a dataset. In Google Sheets, when you clean your data, you can easily highlight those duplicates, ideally, you need to sort these duplicates together so you can see the duplicate data patterns to decide the next steps.