Power Query: sort by custom list

Question

I have a list of time seasons within school years:

"Fall 12-13",
"Winter 12-13",
"Spring 12-13",
"Fall 13-14",
etc.

I want to sort a large number of rows chronologically based on these values. In Excel it is possible to sort by a custom list where I simply input the order that I want the items to be sorted by.

I need that same functionality in Power Query but I have not yet figured out how to do this. I have only been able to set sort order to Order.Ascending or Order.Descending.

Is there a good way to implement sort-by-custom-list in Power Query?

Answer 1

The second argument to Table.Sort can also be a function: either a function that takes two rows and returns an ordering between them (a la strcmp) or a function that takes a single row and returns the value that should be used for comparisons. So one way to sort the values you describe would be to say

= Table.Sort(Table, each List.PositionOf({"Fall 12-13", "Winter 12-13", "Spring 12-13", "Fall 13-14"}, [Column]))