Filter the Unfiltered in Excel 🍺

I tell the boyar: "Watch your language!"
He looks surprised and says: "Well, that's not the kind of filtering I asked for in the report!" 😅

Okay, since we're at it - let me tell you about filters and slicers in Excel and how to stop wasting time searching with Ctrl+F.

Filters and slicers are the sieve and remote control for your table. The sieve sifts out the unnecessary. The remote switches the view with one button. No macros, no VBA.

1️⃣ AutoFilter (Ctrl+Shift+L)
Basic weapon. Hit the hotkey - arrows appear in the table header. Click, select what you need. Boss says "show only Moscow" - click. Done. One second.

2️⃣ Text Filters + Wildcards
Few people know this. In the filter field, * replaces any number of characters, and ? replaces exactly one. Type "bar?n" - you catch both "barin" and "baron". 500 cities in a column, but you need all variations of Petersburg? Type *Petersburg* - it's in the bag.

3️⃣ Top 10 (Number Filter)
The name is misleading. You can do 3, or 50. Number Filters → Top 10. Need to pull top 5 clients by revenue without formulas - 3 clicks. That's it.

4️⃣ Slicers
Visual buttons right on the sheet. Like elevator buttons - press the floor you need, you arrive. Insert → Slicer → choose the field. Boyar asks every five minutes "show another region" - you don't dive into dropdowns, you press a button. Beautiful.

5️⃣ Timeline
Same as slicer, but tailored for dates. Move the slider - see data by days, months, quarters. When the period changes each time - it's a lifesaver.

6️⃣ Lifehack, because it's a sin not to tell: attach one slicer to multiple pivot tables at once. Right-click → "Report Connections". Press a button - 3 pivots update simultaneously. One switch for the whole control room.

7️⃣ The slicer has a multi-select button (Alt+S). Select multiple values without holding Ctrl each time.

All this is pure Excel. No macros or dancing with a tambourine.

Did you know about the wildcards * and ? in filters? Or do you still search the old way with Ctrl+F? 👇

#Excel

@data_dzen🙂