Sorting my months in order of month NOT alphabetically

[Tiger1]

I am having trouble putting my dates into a month (1/2/2019 ----->>> January). Then sorting the list by month order (Not in alphabetical order). I created a virtual column “Month”. I used this to switch the date format to a month:

SWITCH(
MONTH(TODAY()),
1, “January”,
2, “February”,
3, “March”,
4, “April”,
5, “May”,
6, “June”,
7, “July”,
8, “August”,
9, “September”,
10, “October”,
11, “November”,
12, “December”,
“”
)

This did not allow me to sort in order per month.

I then tried this: (on my virtual column and the actual date column)
INDEX(
LIST(
“Jan”, “Feb”, “Mar”, “Apr”, “May”, “Jun”,
“Jul”, “Aug”, “Sep”, “Oct”, “Nov”, “Dec”
),
MONTH(TODAY())
)

Still will not sort in month order.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance

[Steve · Accepted solution]

For the virtual column, you’ll need to prefix the month name with a number that will sort as desired:

CONCATENATE(
  MONTH([invoice_date]),
  "-",
  SWITCH(
    MONTH([invoice_date]),
    1, “January”,
    2, “February”,
    3, “March”,
    4, “April”,
    5, “May”,
    6, “June”,
    7, “July”,
    8, “August”,
    9, “September”,
    10, “October”,
    11, “November”,
    12, “December”,
    “”
  )
)

or:

CONCATENATE(
  MONTH([invoice_date]),
  "-",
  INDEX(
    LIST(
      “Jan”, “Feb”, “Mar”, “Apr”, “May”, “Jun”,
      “Jul”, “Aug”, “Sep”, “Oct”, “Nov”, “Dec”
    ),
    MONTH([invoice_date])
  )
)

[Tiger1]

Ok. And use the virtual column to do this?

[Tiger1]

Neither worked. All it does is put everything under - October?

Also, am i suppose to do something with the original column - “invoice_date” to index the date format?

[Steve]

Ah, yes, that’s important! I’ve updated the instructions above to use [invoice_date] rather than TODAY(). Try that.

[Tiger1]

You are the man! That worked. Thanks again. You have helped me out with so much.