Excel Filtering – how do I use the filter in Excel? Watch the video to learn more
This week’s hint and tip is about how to use the filtering option within Excel. This is on our Intermediate Excel training course and covers where the filtering option is found and how to use it. We are going to go through it now below.
Where the filtering option is found and how to turn it on
There are two ways to find the filtering option in Excel. The first is go to the Home Tab and click on the sort and filter button. When you click on this button, the filter option can be found on the drop down list. The second is to go to the Data Tab and click on the filter button found in the middle of the ribbon.
To turn the filtering option on, just click on the filter button. This will produce drop down arrows along the top of the columns of your data next to the headings. Clicking back on the button will turn them off. You can’t break your filters! This is a common error people think they can make. If they aren’t there, then it means you have just turned them off.
How to apply filters
To filter in your data, firstly select an active cell in your data. An active cell is any cell that has data in it. Once you have the cell selected, turn on your filters. This will give you your drop down arrows. From here you can select the drop down filter on the column you wish to filter on to see your options. In the drop down menu, there are tick boxes that you can use to filter out data for the specific column. This is the most commonly used method for filtering in Excel, the only difference is when filtering numbers. To filter on a column with numbers in it, it is best to use the number filtering option. This gives more flexibility for filtering with numbers.
The video below shows you how to turn on the filter option and how to apply filters in Excel. Filtering is very powerful in Excel and is useful for only showing part of your data.
Take a look below at the video to find out more and then try it out on your own computer!
We hope you have enjoyed this hint and tip on Excel filtering. Why not take a look at our previous one on nested IF statements?