I'm very familiar with highlighting the document area, and choosing a column
to sort by depending upon my desired sort criteria (last name, state, etc).
Are there any methods or formulas which are able to automatically sort, and
take into account the rows and columns that I tend to sort by?

I always sort by Last name (column A), and highlight accross several rows
and columns when re-sorting my spreadhsheet (typically between Column A and
AQ, and all rows containing data (currently 1-166-but that continues to
expand).

Typically I do a sort after adding a days worth of data, but it just seems
time consuming to shade the affected area and re-sort manually all the time.
Seeing as Excel does everything but make coffee (lol), I assume that there
may be a quicker or more automatic way to sort.

Thanks!

Dan