Sample Excel Data You Can Copy and Practice With

A blank worksheet is a lousy place to learn sorting: there is nothing to sort. This sample dataset for Excel gives you a small shop’s fictional orders to paste into a workbook, then rearrange, filter, and calculate with. No customer names or real personal records are involved.

Sample Data for Excel: Copy the Orders

The sample Excel data below uses one row per order. Dates are in U.S. month/day/year order, quantities are whole numbers, and unit prices are in U.S. dollars. The products, regions, and amounts are invented for practice. Copy all the lines inside the box, including the header; the gaps between fields are tabs.

OrderDate	Product	Region	Units	UnitPrice
04/01/2026	Notebook	East	4	3.50
04/02/2026	Pen	West	10	1.25
04/03/2026	Folder	East	6	2.00
04/04/2026	Notebook	West	3	3.50
04/05/2026	Pen	East	8	1.25
04/06/2026	Folder	West	5	2.00

This sample data for Excel has repeated products and regions so that the exercises have something to group. Six orders are enough to see a pattern without scrolling through a miniature novel.

Put the rows into a worksheet

1. Open a new workbook, select cell A1, and paste the example data for Excel. You should see five headers across columns A through E and six orders beneath them.
2. If all the values land in column A, select that column and, in desktop Excel, choose Data > Text to Columns, select Delimited, then choose Tab and finish. Leave columns B through E empty first: splitting can overwrite existing cells. Microsoft’s splitting guide describes this tool and notes that Excel for the web does not have the wizard.
3. Check that the dates look like dates and the numbers are numeric. For instance, clicking D2 should show 4, and E2 should show 3.50 or 3.5. Select column E and apply a currency format if you want dollar signs and two decimal places.
4. Save the workbook as an .xlsx file so your edits and formulas stay together. Keep a clean copy if you want to repeat the exercises later.

If a date stays as text or the month and day are reversed, reenter it using your local date format; the first order is April 1, 2026. If a price stays as text, use your local decimal separator and check that Excel recognizes the value as a number. Widen a column if its contents do not fit; a row of hash marks can simply mean there is not enough room to display a date.

Sort and filter the orders

Select A1:E7 in the example Excel data before sorting, so each product stays with its date and price. On the Data tab, open Sort, confirm that the range has headers, and sort by Units from largest to smallest. The West pen order with 10 units should rise to the top. Microsoft’s sorting guide covers sorting text, numbers, and dates.

To filter the sample Excel data, select a cell in the range and choose Data > Filter. Open the Region header arrow and select only East. Three order rows should remain visible. Clear the filter to show all six again; filtering hides the other rows rather than deleting them.

Calculate an order total

With all rows of the Excel test data visible, type OrderTotal in F1. In F2, enter =D2*E2 and press Enter. Copy the formula down through F7; Excel adjusts the row references. Format column F as currency. For the row containing 10 pens at $1.25 each, the result should be $12.50, wherever that row moved during sorting.

For a final exercise, use these Excel practice records to find which region has the highest single order total: sort the complete A1:F7 range by OrderTotal, largest to smallest, and read the region on the first data row. Then filter to the other region and find its largest order too.