What is Filter in Excel: Why to Use Them?

Introduction: What Are Filters in Excel?

Excel is the most comprehensive of the globally available tools for data management and data analysis. No matter you are working with a huge amount of data or just managing your accounting, you learn that sorting and handling the data is very convenient with Excel. Among all the tools in Excel, the Filter is one of the most helpful. But, what is a filter, and why is it so useful?

A filter in Excel is a tool that provides only the information you want to see based on a set of criteria leaving the rest out. This is particularly helpful when working with large datasets and there is the need to concentrate on a particular section of the data. Using a filter, you can quickly select the subset of data that might be most relevant to you.

How Do Filters Work?

To apply any filter in Excel, one has to go to the Data tab in the Ribbon or Menu Bar. For the record, arrows will appear at the sides of the column heading once you have applied any filter on a range of data. If you click on these arrows, you can decide how the data is filtered. The filtering can be by text, numbers, and dates, or build your filter to suit your needs.

For instance, if you have made a table with the sales data of different regions, you will make a filter that will show only the ‘North’ sales data. Data can also be filtered by specific numbers/dates and this means that working with the data of interest is much easier.

Why Use Filters in Excel?

First, the use of filters offers you more time saving, improved accuracy, and the ability to make the right decisions. Here are a few reasons why filters are incredibly useful:

 1. Focus on Relevant Data 

Filters help to show only the necessary information. It is particularly beneficial when dealing with a large number of records e.g. thousands of records containing the data. Among them, there is an ability to filter the data you receive instead of spending time scrolling through all the received information in the process of work.

 2. Simplify Data Analysis 

While using a filter when you are in the process of analyzing data, the filter makes it easier to find trends and patterns. That way, one can filter out some of the information, and only focus on the data that would give an insight.

 3. Save Time

Data filtering is useful in that it saves the time that can be spent looking for particular information manually. A few clicks will allow selecting the appropriate rows and declining all the useless ones.

 4. Improve Accuracy 

That is why filters can also help minimize errors because you can see only the data you need. This may prove especially helpful whenever you are trying to type in or scroll through large blocks of data.

Benefits of Using Filters

Using filters in Excel has numerous benefits, some of which include:

• Increased Productivity: Filters are useful for data handling because they save time since instead of going through numerous sets of data to find what you are looking for, you simply use the filter.
• Better Data Organization: Thus, additionally, filtering your data will enable you to compile even more organized and structured reports to share and present your data.
• Enhanced Data Analysis: Filters prove beneficial when you wish to segregate large pieces of data into segments that allow easier detection of trends and anomalies.
• Improved Decision-Making: They will enable you to work with only the data that are more pertinent to your case thus making better decisions.

How to Filter in Excel

Now that we have seen what filters are and why they are beneficial let us show how you can apply filters to an Excel document.

 1. Select Your Data Range

Select the range of cells that you want to apply a filter on you will see an arrowhead appear at the bottom left corner of your active cell. Ensure your data has headings (for instance, “Name”, “date”, “sales” etc because Excel will use this heading to filter the data.

 2. Apply the Filter

Get to the Data tab in the Ribbon and click Filter. This will place small drop-down arrows on the column headers.

 3. Choose Your Filter Criteria

Go to the column’s drop-down arrow and select your filter option. You can filter by:

• Text: Filter by typing the word or letter you want to see in the search results directly in the search line.
• Numbers: Filter by ranges in numbers or by individual numbers only.
• Dates: Select by general or certain date, option, or something like that.
• Custom: New filters can also be set by choosing the “Custom Filter” tab.

 4. View Filtered Data

Based upon the filter you apply, the data that do not conform to the requirements will be hidden and can only be viewed after changing the filter options.

 5. Clear the Filter

To cancel the selected filter, you would have to click on the filter icon in the specific column header and then select “Clear Filter”.

Common Types of Filters in Excel

There are multiple types of filters that Excel has to provide to satisfy the demands of users. Here are some common types:

• Text Filters: These enable you to query data depending on a given substring, word, or indeed any text. For instance, you can search every item that is labelled beginning with the letter or alphabetical ‘A’.
• Number Filters: Whenever you are dealing with numeric data you can filter it to a given range for instance, using greater than or less than.
• Date Filters: Used to navigate within the recordings, for example, to filter all recordings made in the last month or last year.
• Custom Filters: These enable you to apply more restrictive conditions such for instance filtering for values between two figures or for filtering text that contains some given word.

Advanced Filter Features

if the user wants more control, he gets the option to use Advanced Filter. Select fields enable one to filter data based on such specific parameters and even get data from another place. To apply the Advanced Filter you have to go to the Data tab in the Sort & Filter section and click on Advanced. This feature is especially useful when you need to perform operations like:

• For example, how to filter a list of records where we want to use multiple conditions from different columns?
• To save desired or extraordinary records from another place in your worksheet.

Real-Life Examples: When and How to Use Filters?

Let’s look at a couple of real-life scenarios where filters in Excel can be extremely helpful:

1. Sales Analysis: Let’s say, you have a database of all salespeople and their sales records by products and regions. It provides filters where you can assess the sales data from a particular region or particular salesperson.
2. Employee Database: When working in a database containing information about the employees you can search for a group of workers by the departments they belong to, their positions, or the time they joined the company. This is helpful for the HR departments especially while issuing their reports or when making the staff absorption decisions.
3. Inventory Management: This means it is possible to filter out products that may be out of stock, or those that are almost out so that only functional items are used to compile the inventory list.

Conclusion

To sum it up, filters in Excel are a very useful instrument that makes dealing with big amounts of given data less problematic. As they help to point only to useful data and enable you to sort and analyze it in the blink of an eye, filters can contribute to the increase in the rate of work, as well as the quality of the decisions made. Filters are something you will use almost every day no matter whether you are working with sales data, employee records, or personal budget.

Learning how to apply filters in Excel widens your options in your data manipulation process significantly. So the next time you find yourself dealing with a large amount of data try using a filter – it will not only take less time but also help you discover something new!