Sometimes reading all your data in one go can be quite challenging. Other times, you may just want to find something quite specific. Regardless of which fits your predicament, you’re likely to find filters quite useful. If you’ve been struggling to navigate large tables or lists, you can use filters to minimise the observable data to only the list/table elements that fall under your given criteria.
Solution:
- Select your table
- Go to data > advanced
- Select filter criteria
- Select filter location
- Confirm
With this step-by-step image guide on creating criteria and a filter in Excel, you’re likely to be a filtering master in no time. So, let’s get started, shall we? Be sure to follow along.
Quick links:
Creating criteria and a filter for multiple columns in Excel
Step 1 – Open your sheet and select your table
- Click (and hold) at the start of your table, then drag to the end (where you can release your hold).
Step 2 – Access the advanced filter from the data tab
- Using the ribbon, access the data tab with a click. Then select Advanced, next to the Filter button. If you select the regular filter option, you won’t be able to configure your own filter criteria.
Step 3 – Configure your filter
- First ensure your table has been properly selected, followed by selecting your criteria table. Lastly, decide on the location options. Filter the list in place will display the filtered table/list above the original. While Copy to another location as the name implies would display it at another location. Confirm your options by selecting OK.
Step 4 – Assess your filter
- Now you’ve applied a filter, you should take a look at your data and deduce whether the filter worked as intended. If not, consider looking at your criteria. It’s possible you miss-input a value or didn’t select your table or criteria properly.
End note
Recap
Excel provides an advanced filter tool in addition to the base filter. This allows you to manually input a criterion for the filter to follow, as opposed to having Excel enforce its own. This is useful to only observe data that fits the description of what you’re looking for.
Farewell
As usual, this section is dedicated to thanking readers for their support. We’d be pleased to know you found this post useful and/or informative. If you have any more Office 365 related queries, please consult our related articles (listed below). However, if you have other queries, consider looking at the rest of the site. We’re frequently posting new stuff each week and may just have the guide or troubleshooting tips you need. Regardless, we wish you a good day/night. Farewell readers.
Our related articles:
- A complete guide to using OneDrive to transfer files to a new computer – OneDrive is a cloud storage platform offered as part of the Microsoft 365 suite. With it, your various folders and files may be stored online and downloaded for use from anywhere with an internet connection. As such, OneDrive is very useful if you’re looking to get files from one computer to another without wanting to mess around with storage devices.
- A complete guide to fixing OneDrive sync issues on Mac – OneDrive sometimes has issues, and many users have claimed that OneDrive isn’t synchronizing on their Mac OS devices, however, there are solutions available. In this blog, we will cover the most effective approaches to help users fix sync issues on their OneDrive devices. We will address some of the causes of why OneDrive won’t sync correctly and what users can do to help resolve these issues. Use the guide below to see how you can resolve OneDrive sync issues on Mac OS devices.
- Ways to delete a OneDrive shared library – OneDrive’s Shared libraries (or SharePoint sites) serve as large collections of various documents, media and content for your team/organization. In this post we’ll be giving you a short image guided walk through on deleting your OneDrive shared libraries. Additionally, to ease any potential confusion, we’ll also go over why you may still be seeing your shared library afterwards.
- Guide to deleting document libraries in SharePoint Online – SharePoint Online uses document libraries to store various files and folders created by you (the user). If a user for some reason decided they no longer required a document library, they could exercise the ability to delete it. Albeit, that requires actually knowing how to go about it. Fortunately for us, it’s quite straightforward. In this short post we’ll be guiding you through deleting document libraries with an image assisted walkthrough. We’ll additionally let you know why you may be unable to delete a certain library and under what circumstances your lost data can be restored.