Normally the traditional and most practice way of sorting a dropdownlist is using ArrayList that I have described in below link http://www.eggheadcafe.com/sample-code/ASP.NET/226deb7d-7e31-49bb-a074-6593a4c0681f/sorting-a-dropdownlist-using-arraylist.aspx Using LINQ OrderBY it is very easy using a single Method var dc = new DataClassesDataContext(); var bindDDL = (from cnt in dc.Countries select new { CountryName= cnt.CountryName, ID=cnt.ID }).OrderBy(o=>o.CountryName); DropDownList1.DataSource = bindDDL; DropDownList1.DataTextField = "CountryName"; DropDownList1.DataValueField = "ID"; DropDownList1.DataBind();