Re-ordering rows containing text and formula

I have a spreadsheet with some 18 columns and around 500 rows. Each cell in each row contains either text, numbers or formulae.
Column 1 contains the text that I wish to re-order and I need all of the other columns in the individual rows to re-order accordingly.
I have tried many ways to achieve this including Microsoft Online help but just cannot get ti to work. I am missing something that is probably quite obvious.