Ordering issue with date values when creating pivot tables

Your problem is that excel does not recognize your text strings of "mm/dd/yyyy" as date objects in it's internal memory. Therefore when you create pivottable it doesn't consider these strings to be dates.

You'll need to first convert your dates to actual date values before creating the pivottable. This is a good resource for that: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/convert-dates-stored-as-text-to-dates-HP001162867.aspx

In your spreadsheet I created a second date column in B with the formula =DATEVALUE(A2). Creating a pivot table with this new date column and Count of Sales then sorts correctly in the pivot table (option becomes Sort Oldest to Newest instead of Sort A to Z).

April 20, 2017

I've read all the previously posted answers, and they require a lot of extra work. The quick and simple solution I have found is as follows:

1) Un-group the date field in the pivot table. 2) Go to the Pivot Field List UI. 3) Re-arrange your fields so that the Date field is listed FIRST in the ROWS section. 4) Under the Design menu, select Report Layout / Show in Tabular Form.

By default, Excel sorts by the first field in a pivot table. You may not want the Date field to be first, but it's a compromise that will save you time and much work.