21 thoughts on “Dynamic Sorting With a UDF”

1. Hello John,
   Great way to ensure you have a sorted table always…Would the code work on a dynamic range
   (Dont have 007…so no ways of testing it)

   Regards
   Sam

2. Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing! Looks like it might be an over sight in the coding? I tend to agree with Tusha Merta on the issue, aviod it!

3. Would someone advise where this benefits over the use of:

   If Target.Column = 2 Then
   Cells(1).CurrentRegion.Sort Key1:=Columns(2), Header:=xlYes
   End If

   in the Worksheet_Cange event ?

4. Andrew, the only benefit that I see is that (by setting up the function arguments) it’s possible for a user to change the search parameters without having to know how to edit the VBA code.

5. John

   I would be more than concerned that a User would make an entry on line 14 and forget to change B13 to B14, whereas my code would do this automatically. There is also the possibility that some users would not think that the A1:B13 ref. shouldn’t be there and just delete it.

   Thanks for the clarification however.

6. John,
   Why not use constants xlAscending and xlDescending in the function code?

7. This could be lots of fun if it bypasses circular recalc detection. Yet another way for udfs to cause infinite loops. Just what everyone needs!

   So much for Microsoft claims that udfs *can’t* modify the Excel environment.

8. Hi John,

   Does it work if the referred cells are in a table and you’ve used the new structured referencing i.s.o. cell addresses?

   IMO this is a bug though, I wouldn’t want this to happen.

9. For some reason I could not get his version to work… Is it possible that this was an exception to Excel’s worksheet function calculation mode protection that has now been fixed by Microsoft? Or am I not doing something correctly?

   I’m using Excel 2007 12.0.6300.5000 SP1 MSO (12.0.6213.1000).

   Any thoughts? Has SP1 closed this hole in the worksheet function calculation mode protection, or am I simply doing something wrong?

   Just curious…

   Mike

10. […] Walkenbach has an article at Daily-Dose-of Excel on Dynamic Sorting with a UDF, which whilst intersting has the disadvantages that it doesn’t work in Excel 2007, and is not […]

11. I’m trying to develop a UDF that uses the Quick Sort routine to return the value of a specified position within the sorted array. To illustrate, let’s say I have values of 350, 500, 125, 625, 325, and 700 in rows A1:A6 respectively. Now my function needs to read this range, sort it in ascending order (using Quick Sort), then return the “position” specified in my function. So for example, the third position would return a value of 350 because that would be the third position in the sorted list. When I deploy this function, I will be sorting lists of hundreds of numbers, so I want to use Quick Sort because of the speed advantage. Also, I will ultimately incorporate the Select Case… construct to analyze multiple nth positions within the sorted array, but for clarity’s sake, I’ve left that out for now. So far this is what my function looks like:

    Function PositionValue(VolRng As Range)
    Dim First, Last As Long
    First = Application.WorksheetFunction.min(VolRng)
    Last = Application.WorksheetFunction.max(VolRng)
    Call Quick_Sort(VolRng, First, Last)
    PositionValue = VolRng(3, 1)’ this will return the third position within the sorted array
    End Function

    The Quick Sort routine I’m using is as follows:

    Private Sub Quick_Sort(ByRef SortArray As Variant, ByVal First As Long, ByVal Last As Long)
    Dim Low As Long, High As Long
    Dim Temp As Variant, List_Separator As Variant
    Low = First
    High = Last
    List_Separator = SortArray((First + Last) / 2)
    Do
    Do While (SortArray(Low) List_Separator)
    High = High – 1
    Loop
    If (Low <= High) Then
    Temp = SortArray(Low)
    SortArray(Low) = SortArray(High)
    SortArray(High) = Temp
    Low = Low + 1
    High = High – 1
    End If
    Loop While (Low <= High)
    If (First < High) Then Quick_Sort SortArray, First, High
    If (Low < Last) Then Quick_Sort SortArray, Low, Last
    End Sub

    I’m not sure if using Quick Sort is overkill for this and there is a simpler way. Any help to get this working would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

    Best regards,
    Bill Ghauri

12. Function PositionValue(VolRng As Range, Optional lPos As Long = 1)
       
        Dim vArray As Variant
       
        vArray = VolRng.Value
        QuickSort vArray, LBound(vArray, 1), UBound(vArray, 1)
       
        PositionValue = vArray(lPos, 1)
       
    End Function

    Public Sub QuickSort(vArray As Variant, inLow As Long, inHigh As Long)

      Dim vPivot As Variant
      Dim vSwap As Variant
      Dim lLow As Long
      Dim lHigh As Long

      lLow = inLow
      lHigh = inHigh

      vPivot = vArray((inLow + inHigh) 2, 1)

      Do While lLow <= lHigh

         Do While vArray(lLow, 1) < vPivot And lLow < inHigh
            lLow = lLow + 1
         Loop

         Do While vPivot < vArray(lHigh, 1) And lHigh > inLow
            lHigh = lHigh – 1
         Loop

         If (lLow <= lHigh) Then
            vSwap = vArray(lLow, 1)
            vArray(lLow, 1) = vArray(lHigh, 1)
            vArray(lHigh, 1) = vSwap
            lLow = lLow + 1
            lHigh = lHigh – 1
         End If

      Loop

      If (inLow < lHigh) Then QuickSort vArray, inLow, lHigh
      If (lLow < inHigh) Then QuickSort vArray, lLow, inHigh

    End Sub

    The low and high that you pass in are the bounds of the array, not the minimum and maximum values. Also, the range array of values is two dimensional, so all your array references needed a second dimension. Also, you are pulling the 3rd value from the range which ignores the sorting that was done.

    Quicksort adapted from here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/152319/vba-array-sort-function

13. @ Dick,

    I kind of boggles my mind how you experts can figure this stuff out so fast! You solution works great! Many thanks.

    Best regards,
    Bill Ghauri

14. What’s wrong with =LARGE(array,k)?

15. @ Jon,

    I wanted to use a UDF that I could call from another sub, but I suppose the LARGE function would work too. I did not try it. In my model I had been been using a sub to copy/sort the values on a worksheet. It worked, but I needed to steamline the model as much as possible and I figured a UDF was the best route. Btw, this is how my final function looks with the Select Case construct. It works great.

    Function Vol_ID(Vol_0 As Long, volRng As Range)
    Dim vArray As Variant
    vArray = volRng.Value
    QuickSort vArray, LBound(vArray, 1), UBound(vArray, 1)
    Select Case True
    Case Is = Vol_0 vArray(5, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(17, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(29, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(41, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(53, 1)
    Vol_ID = “EXTM”
    End Select
    End Function

    Best regards,
    Bill Ghauri

16. I must have messed up posting because it cut out some of my code.

17. Maybe this time…

    Function Vol_ID(Vol_0 As Long, volRng As Range)
    Dim vArray As Variant
    vArray = volRng.Value
    QuickSort vArray, LBound(vArray, 1), UBound(vArray, 1)
    Select Case True
    Case Is = Vol_0 vArray(5, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(17, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(29, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(41, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(53, 1)
    Vol_ID = “EXTM”
    End Select
    End Function

18. One more time. If this doesn’t work, my apologies for mucking up this thread.

    Function Vol_ID(Vol_0 As Long, volRng As Range)
    Dim vArray As Variant
    vArray = volRng.Value
    QuickSort vArray, LBound(vArray, 1), UBound(vArray, 1)
    Select Case True
    Case Is = Vol_0 vArray(5, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(17, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(29, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(41, 1) And Vol_0 vArray(53, 1)
    Vol_ID = “EXTM”
    End Select
    End Function

19. Bill, put your code in code tags. See the instructions just above the comment box. This will preserve the code and format it correctly.

20. I have a range $A$5:$K$26. I want to sort on the J column, how do I modify the code to do this?

21. Nevermind, I changed the .Cell(5, 10) and that worked. I had inadvertently pasted this function into two different spots and was modifying the wrong one.

Posting code? Use <pre> tags for VBA and <code> tags for inline.