# How does alphabetical sorting work in Kibana? **URL:** \ **Category:** Kibana\ **Created:** [May 21, 2019, 4:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-does-alphabetical-sorting-work-in-kibana/182060 "2019-05-21T16:14:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nuketro0p3r](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nuketro0p3r/32/32584_2.png) [@nuketro0p3r](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nuketro0p3r)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2019, 4:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-does-alphabetical-sorting-work-in-kibana/182060/1 "2019-05-21T16:14:00Z")
I'm trying to sort a heatmap X and Y based on alphabetical order. I expected it to work lexicographically for all series over all, but it seems like its sorting this on a bucket level This results is seemingly random order on the X-axis series... What kind-of a sorting is used when selecting order by Alphabetical? Is it applied to the entire result of the bucket or just one random bucket? Is there a way to get a more controlled/human readable way to sort on custom criteria on values? Thanks for all the help? ---
**Author:** ![LeeDr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/leedr/32/9289_2.png) [@LeeDr](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/LeeDr)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2019, 9:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-does-alphabetical-sorting-work-in-kibana/182060/2 "2019-05-21T21:20:19Z")
Kibana is basically just rendering the data returned from Elasticsearch (which includes the sort). To see what's going on, you can click on `Inspect` in your visualization, then in the window that opens up, then change from `Data` to `View: Requests`, and then you can select the `Request` and `Response` tabs. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/c/3/c3a9926f5ee33c8dbe28ec3f11eb7f1b0a976164.png) I'm not looking at a heatmap at the moment, but you can try rearranging the order of your buckets to see if that gives you the results you need. If not, please post a screenshot and tell us what version you're on. Regards, Lee ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2019, 9:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-does-alphabetical-sorting-work-in-kibana/182060/3 "2019-06-18T21:20:21Z")
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