Question

I am trying to sort a worksheet by the first column in excel using INTEROP.

I just want a simple sort of the entire range by the first column. I am doing the following:

valueRange.Sort(valueRange.Columns[7, Type.Missing], Excel.XlSortOrder.xlAscending, valueRange.Columns[7, Type.Missing],
                Type.Missing, Excel.XlSortOrder.xlAscending, Type.Missing, Excel.XlSortOrder.xlAscending, 
                Excel.XlYesNoGuess.xlNo, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Excel.XlSortOrientation.xlSortColumns, 
                Excel.XlSortMethod.xlPinYin, Excel.XlSortDataOption.xlSortNormal, 
                Excel.XlSortDataOption.xlSortNormal, Excel.XlSortDataOption.xlSortNormal);

But getting errors. I am unable to find proper documentation on how to do this sorting.

Could someone please give me a working example of a simple sort of a specified range by a specific column?

as per documentation I tried to do this:

valueRange.Sort(valueRange.Columns[7, Type.Missing],
                        Excel.XlSortOrder.xlAscending,
                        Type.Missing,
                        Type.Missing,
                        Excel.XlSortOrder.xlAscending,
                        Type.Missing,
                        Excel.XlSortOrder.xlAscending,
                        Excel.XlYesNoGuess.xlNo,
                        Type.Missing,
                        Type.Missing,
                        Excel.XlSortOrientation.xlSortColumns,
                        Excel.XlSortMethod.xlStroke,
                        Excel.XlSortDataOption.xlSortNormal,
                        Excel.XlSortDataOption.xlSortNormal,
                        Excel.XlSortDataOption.xlSortNormal);

However right now I am getting the errors:

{“The sort reference is not valid. Make sure that it’s within the data you want to sort, and the first Sort By box isn’t the same or blank.”}

Answer 1

In order to sort a range by a single column in that range, you can do something like the following (if you are using VS 2010 and above with the “dynamic” keyword):

dynamic allDataRange = worksheet.UsedRange;
allDataRange.Sort(allDataRange.Columns[7], Excel.XlSortOrder.xlDescending);

In my example, I had a spreadsheet with 10 or so columns, and I wanted to sort the entire spreadsheet by the 7th column, in descending order.

I was helped by the above answer, but when I tried Code4Life’s snippet:

dynamic valueRange = GetTheRange();
valueRange.Columns.get_Item(1)).Sort(valueRange.Columns[1]);

it only sorted the first column of the range. The OP asked for sorting an entire range by one column, not sorting one column in a range. So after a little trial and error I got my above simplified code.