Sorting using a predetermined list of variables

I'm rather new to Excel and different Data Validations/Conditional Formatting functions. However, someone once sent me a spreadsheet that had some very clever (or at least clever to me) sorting features and I was wondering if someone could help me replicate that. They had in the top row some sort of cell that had something like "Sort by...." as the information header. When this was clicked, a dro down menu would expand giving several options such as "By Last Name, By First Name, By Hire Date, By Salary", etc. This was an employee list that had already defined the range of information to sort and to what "type" of sorts would be required. The nice part is that a novice would not have to highlight the information and then set up a sorting definition but rather click and choose from the predetermined ones.

I hope that description is not too confusing. Can someone help me with how that is set up?

Thanks in advance,
CheddarThief

can you give us an example?

- I think you can just highlight the entire range and create a "List"
// Data / List/ Create List...

I've attached a dummy example. I tried to keep it simple. Again, I can't remember exactly what this looked like before but I saw it briefly on another file that someone opened. From what I remember, there was a drop down list then when accessed had a fly out where it gave you the option of "Ascending" or "Descending". Then once you selected which one there were options that correlated to the headers for each row. So basically, in one drop down list, you had the ability to sort the entire worksheet in either ascending or descending order based on whatever criteria you deem to be sortable. Again, I know this is rather cumbersome but I just know that the function seemed very useful. Now if I could only remember exactly how it looked and what it did that would be great.

CheddarThief