# Sorting strings in Cell data when using spreadsheet view

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/sorting-strings-in-cell-data-when-using-spreadsheet-view/11859
**Category:** Development
**Tags:** vtk
**Created:** [April 12, 2023, 9:45am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/sorting-strings-in-cell-data-when-using-spreadsheet-view/11859 "2023-04-12T09:45:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![the\_dense](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/the_dense/32/11360_2.png) [@the\_dense](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/the_dense)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2023, 9:45am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/sorting-strings-in-cell-data-when-using-spreadsheet-view/11859/1 "2023-04-12T09:45:29Z")

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Hi,

I have a vtk file with lots of line elements. Each line element has a material definition given by a string entry defined as a field. In the spreadsheet view I often sort the elements by certain fields. This works fine for numerical values but doesn’t seem to work for the material entry. Is this a bug or simply not implemented as a feature?

I am using the latest Paraview 5.11.1.

Best regards

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### Author: ![cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/cory.quammen/32/11193_2.png) [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2023, 2:27pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/sorting-strings-in-cell-data-when-using-spreadsheet-view/11859/2 "2023-04-12T14:27:00Z")

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Welcome to the ParaView community, @the_dense. It’s reasonable to expect sorting of string fields to work in the Spreadsheet View - the fact that it doesn’t work may have been an oversight. Could you please file this as a bug at [https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/issues/](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/issues/)

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### Author: ![wascott](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/8e8cbc/32.png) [@wascott](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/wascott)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2023, 4:14pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/sorting-strings-in-cell-data-when-using-spreadsheet-view/11859/3 "2023-04-12T16:14:29Z")

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Cory, OK to mark it Sandia.

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### Author: ![cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/cory.quammen/32/11193_2.png) [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2023, 11:55pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/sorting-strings-in-cell-data-when-using-spreadsheet-view/11859/4 "2023-04-12T23:55:16Z")

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Thanks, Alan!