How to Filter Data in a Microsoft Excel Worksheet

This article shows you how to filter data in Microsoft Excel, especially if you have a worksheet with many columns and hundreds or even thousands of rows. The article assumes that your table/data has a clear set of headings (preferably only a single row).

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Microsoft Excel installed on your computer
• A worksheet containing a lot of data

1. Row 1 contains field/column headings from A1 through E1 Assuming that you already have an open Microsoft Excel worksheet with data, the first thing you need to do is check to make sure that the first row contains the field/column headings.
2. Sample worksheet contains a contiguous set of data Next, review the data, watching out for breaks between rows. Ideally, data must be organized/structured in one contiguous table. For this reason, Data Filters are best used for worksheets that are organized like a database table.
3. Although this next step is not required, I always perform it anyway just to ensure that all my records are available for filtering. Select the entire data range including the field/column headings. For example, if I have a worksheet with 5 columns (A through E), a row of field headings (row 1), and 53 rows of data (rows 2 through 54), select A1 through E54.
4. Turning on the AutoFilter function Turn on the Autofilter function. From the menu bar, select:
   
   Data -> Filter -> AutoFilter. You should now see dropdowns in each column heading that allow you to select data to filter on.
5. Filtering data You are now ready to filter data. In the example I've provided, I am filtering based on column A (TableID), selecting only records with a TableID value of 1.

Tips & Warnings

• If your worksheet has a lot of formulas and performs many calculations, filtering performance is impacted significantly, thus having a lot of memory and processing speed may also play an important role.
• The more rows your table has, the longer it will take to filter records.
• You may filter on 1 or more fields.
• Excel has row and column limitations: 65,536 rows by 256 columns