For multiple variable sorts, you will also need to establish the order of sorting. For example, you may wish to sort the names of relatives by name. If you have them organized by first and last names, then you can sort first names, then on last names. This would give you an ordering in which all of the last names are clustered together, and all those with the same last names will be sorted in order of their first names. You need to exercise some care when sorting text.
Numbers are fairly predictable.
Text, however, may depend on how the data are encoded. However, this works only for English. You should approach sorting of words in other languages with caution, because the assignment of letters in a foreign alphabet to a number code may not produce the correct ordering of the words. Select the cell range, then select the Sort option from the Data menu. Sorting by rows keeps all cells in the rows of the cell range together as a unit, and shuffles the rows into order.