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I'm running into this weird problem with Google spreadsheets: if the cells have comments on them and I sort the spreadsheet, the rows sort but the comments stay in the same position, and don't move with the cells they're attached to. In other words, the cells look like this:

A
C  <-- comment on this cell
B

and then I sort by this column:

A
B  <-- comment remains on this cell (stays in position)
C  <-- comment should have remained attached to this cell

This means that sorting is completely broken and I can't use it at all, because I clearly need the cell comments to stay with the cell they're attached to. Is this a bad bug in Google Spreadsheets, or am I missing something here?

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  • I can't reproduce the phenomenon you're describing. See file I've added and see for yourself. I've tried column sorting as well as the menu option: goo.gl/NWEJ1. – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Dec 2 '12 at 13:09
  • I have view access only, so I can't test it out. Can you share with Everyone. I should be more specific and add that I'm selecting a range of cells and choosing "Sort Range", not trying to sort by the whole column (because of the way the data are structured). – Joshua Frank Dec 2 '12 at 13:32
  • Frank, it's yours !! – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Dec 2 '12 at 13:37
  • Did you find the problem, causing the mayhem? – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Dec 2 '12 at 17:39
  • Thanks for following up, but not really. I tried copying the data to a new sheet, but the comments didn't copy. And then, somewhere in the process, it deleted all the comments entirely. So I'm not too happy with Google Spreadsheets right now. The data in those comments wasn't mission critical, but it's still pretty annoying. – Joshua Frank Dec 3 '12 at 4:13
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This isn't really an answer, but, just to close the loop, during my various attempts to troubleshoot this problem, the spreadsheet just deleted all the comments, so that fixed my problem in one sense, I guess. I don't really have any idea what was causing the initial problem, or the data deletion. It's a fairly big spreadsheet, with multiple collaborators, so maybe it got corrupted. Boo, Google.

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  • Your answer will be moderated.....Let us know if we can help once more. – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Dec 3 '12 at 6:48
  • Hi Frank, Was it a glitch in the matrix, or have you seen this problem again? – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Jan 22 '13 at 19:42
  • I haven't seen it again, but I haven't really been using comments, because I don't want to lose my work again. – Joshua Frank Jan 23 '13 at 1:19
  • Just happened / happens to me still. Ridiculous. How can I notify Google of this bug? – grunwald2.0 Mar 28 '13 at 23:31
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Were you using the filter button to filter/sort or was it turned on at the time?

What can happen is that if you have that filter turned on, but it is not properly wrapped around the entire data set it will only sort the data it IS wrapped around -

what I do instead of using the filter to sort, is click on the tiny arrow that shows up next to the column Letter Header itself, and choose sort on that menu instead and that will ALWAYS sort your entire sheet.

enter image description here

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