I have a table with the first column formatted as date. I am unable to get the table to sort rows by date. I can sort by other column values but date does not work. Why?
If your dates are detected as dates (i.e., you have Table-Number Recognition enabled, and entered dates using correct locale-specific format, or explicitly set the cells format to be Date; and now you can change the dates’ display modifying the cell number format - say, to display 2 or 4 digits in year as you like) - then simple numeric sort works fine.
You can also enter dates in the textual format that allows to do alphabetical sort: use YYYY-MM-DD format. It is the format defined by ISO, and its use greatly simplifies both human and machine treatment by eliminating ambiguities.