Data Filter

Now that you have your data in shape to analyze, one quick tool that you can use is the data filter.  It allows you to get a look at a segment of your data, without having to sort the data.  Here are a number of ways that you could use a data filter:

• Find the smallest or largest number- this could also be a quality control check to see if any numbers are out of range
• Find all specific items that match a criteria- such as sales to the East region
• Filnd all blank or nonblank cells- another useful quality control or informational filter
• Find numbers greater than or less than another number
• Find a number equal to or not equal to another number
• Find top or bottom numbers by percent
• Find cases beginning or ending with certain text

The steps involved are:

• Have your block of data ready, with column headers

• Highlight your data or just the row with the column headers

• Go to the Data menu and select Filter, then AutoFilter

You then will see drop down arrows to the right of each column you have set up for AutoFiltering.

Now you can then use the pulldown arrow to select a criteria.

Notice that you also get a couple other options.  Top 10 and Custom.  (You also get All, which you choose after you are done with looking at this particular filter). 

We will cover them in more advanced filtering tomorrow.

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