Ordering Slicer in Excel

We already discussed how to create, use and connect Excel Slicers.

So far, however, we did not show how, when and in what way Slicers could be manipulated.

We will show how to order a Slicer in a custom manner in the text below.

Custom Order Slicer in Excel

As in the previous examples with Slicers, we will use the list of NBA players, their teams, conferences, and statistics from several matches.

C:\Users\Harun\Desktop\Upwork Excel\How to Make Pivot and Chart Slicers in Excel\nba-players-table.png

Our data set has 28 rows, but only 10 are presented in the table above.

We will create the Pivot Table, put Players in the Rows field, and the sum of points and rebounds in the Values field.

Our table looks like this:

Now we will insert a Slicer and choose Player as a column in it. We will notice that the data in our Slicer are ordered alphabetically, although the data in our original table is not:

How exactly could we change this?

First things first, we will delete the Slicer that we have. Next, we go to File >> Options >> Advanced.

Then, we have to scroll down to the General section and select Edit Custom Lists:

When we click on this button, a pop-up window will appear:

We have to add the list of our NBA players in here. We will click on the little icon next to the text “Import list from cells” and select range A2:A10 from the NBA players sheet. In this range, all of our players are located.

We will then click Import. We now have our players on our Custom list.

We will click OK, go back to our Pivot Table and create a Slicer.

Now the list in our Slicer corresponds to the list in our original table and our Custom list:

If we want to change the order again for any reason, we just have to repeat all of these steps and create the order that we want.

To prove that, we will go to the Edit Customs Lists again and place LeBron James on the fifth place in the list:

When we create our Slicer again, Lebron James will be fifth in it, as we defined:

Tomasz Decker is an Excel specialist, skilled in data analysis and financial modeling.