Sort A-Z but keep Products/Variation Integrity

Question

I am working on a price sheet that has products with variations to that product underneath. It has 15,000 rows and I would like to sort in alphabetical order.

However doing so breaks the product/variations, so you wont know what variations are with what product. I have color coded all the products as well as the variations.

What I need is the Products to be sorted AZ, along with keeping the variations underneath it.

Sorting breaks the product/variation setup.

Answer 1

Using an excel formula, here is a possible approach. In cell D2 , put the following formula:

=LET(rng, A2:B9, types, INDEX(rng,,1), names, INDEX(rng,,2),
  groups, SCAN("", names, LAMBDA(acc,name, IF(acc="",name,
    IF(XLOOKUP(name, names, types)="Product", name, acc)))),
 DROP(SORT(HSTACK(rng, groups), COLUMNS(rng)+1),,-1)
)

Here is the output:

groups name contains an array of the same number of rows of rng , having the product name for the product and its variation. Then we just need to sort by this intermediate column created the input range.

Note : This solution assumes the first row always starts with a Product , not a Variation .

Adding a helper column C is another alternative. For example, put in C2 the following formula and drag it down:

=IF(A2="Product", B2, C1)

then you can use this column for sorting. This is exactly what the SCAN formula does, but generating the values programmatically.

Answer 2

Make a new column in front of A (or wherever, doesn't really matter, visually is easiest imo): "Sort"

=If(B2 = "Product"; C2; A1+1)

Copy paste as Values and then sort descending. You can delete/hide the A column after then. Making "keys" is the easiest way to sort/organize/check for doubles.