# Explorer: sort values in drop down (groupby) by default

**URL:** <https://discourse.holoviz.org/t/explorer-sort-values-in-drop-down-groupby-by-default/6115>\
**Category:** hvPlot\
**Tags:** explorer\
**Created:** [September 29, 2023, 1:16am UTC](https://discourse.holoviz.org/t/explorer-sort-values-in-drop-down-groupby-by-default/6115 "2023-09-29T01:16:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![raybellwaves](https://discourse.holoviz.org/user_avatar/discourse.holoviz.org/raybellwaves/32/1348_2.png) [@raybellwaves](https://discourse.holoviz.org/u/raybellwaves)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2023, 1:16am UTC](https://discourse.holoviz.org/t/explorer-sort-values-in-drop-down-groupby-by-default/6115/1 "2023-09-29T01:16:34Z")

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Can explorer sort value in drop down (groupby) by default?

It’ll make it much easier to find the value I am looking for e.g. I have data with ~1,000 values for a column. For example, below, in the tutorial data the values of the island groupby are listed in random order (maybe order in the dataframe?) of Torgersen, Biscoe and Dream. I would like them to be sorted as Biscoe, Dream, Torgersen.

I’m guessing this is a performance issue thing so perhaps it could be turned out such as explorer(df, sort\_values=True)?

 ![Screenshot 2023-09-28 at 9.08.40 PM](https://discourse.holoviz.org/uploads/default/original/2X/3/31c55ee35d7b518168685f739c1189d5e83bc604.jpeg)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ahuang11](https://discourse.holoviz.org/user_avatar/discourse.holoviz.org/ahuang11/32/4947_2.png) [@ahuang11](https://discourse.holoviz.org/u/ahuang11)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2023, 9:26pm UTC](https://discourse.holoviz.org/t/explorer-sort-values-in-drop-down-groupby-by-default/6115/2 "2023-09-30T21:26:25Z")

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I believe if dataframe/dataset is presorted by what it’s grouped by, it’ll show in that order, e.g.

```auto
df = df.sort_values("island")
hvplot.explorer(df)

```

Could be a kwarg to set, in explorer:  
`sort_groupby_values`