Hi Elizabeth,
Thanks for checking in on this.
For column and bar charts, it is possible to manually re-order. The option can be found under sort:
Having selected sort manually, you can drag a column or bar to the order you would like. Press Apply on exit of manually sorting.
If you have temporal fields, all date/time components are automatically ordered correctly. You can convert string fields to time (e.g. if the formatting has been lost in a csv file), by clicking on the icon of the field:
You will the see the date/time components in the correct order in all charts.
I hope that helps.