VIBlend WinForms DataGridView has a built-in feature which allows you to set a custom Sort comparer. In this post, we will show you how to sort the DataGridView rows or columns by label.
At first, we will create a Comparer which compares HierarchyItem objects by the HierarchyItem.Caption property.

C#

private class ItemLabelComparer : IComparer<HierarchyItem>
{
    public int Compare(HierarchyItem item1, HierarchyItem item2)
    {
        return string.Compare(item1.Caption, item2.Caption);
    }
}

VB .NET

Private Class ItemLabelComparer
    Implements IComparer(Of HierarchyItem)
    Public Function Compare(ByVal item1 As HierarchyItem, ByVal item2 As HierarchyItem) As Integer
        Return String.Compare(item1.Caption, item2.Caption)
    End Function
End Class

Create an instance of the ItemLabelComparer object and pass it to the RowsHierarchy.SortBy method. If you want to sort the ColumnsHierarchy, call the ColumnsHierarchy.SortBy method.

C#

ItemLabelComparer Comparer = new ItemLabelComparer();
 this.vDataGridView1.RowsHierarchy.SortBy(this.vDataGridView1.ColumnsHierarchy.Items[0], sorting, Comparer);
this.Refresh();

VB .NET

Dim Comparer As New ItemLabelComparer()
 Me.vDataGridView1.RowsHierarchy.SortBy(Me.vDataGridView1.ColumnsHierarchy.Items(0), sorting, Comparer)
Me.Refresh()