Filter is one of the most useful and powerful tools in Excel

1. You keep visible only some rows
2. Data are not deleted, just hidden

How do you visualize the filters?

You know that the filter is ON when you see arrows on the headers of your table.

Activate the Filter

1. Select one of the cells of your table
2. Activate the filter in the Data > Filter

3. Now you see arrows in the header of your table

• You can also activate the filter with the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + L

Apply a filter for one criterion

Working with the filter is very easy. To select only the rows for the country Germany (DE), you must do the following steps

1. Go to the header of the column where you want to apply the filter
2. Click on the arrow
3. Uncheck all items (Select All)
4. Select only the item you want (in this case, Beverages)

• Only the rows with this criterion are visible. The other rows are hidden.
• You know, when your table is filtered, the row numbers are colored in blue. As you can see, only the row numbers of the rows containing your criterion are visible.

Apply a filter on many columns.

You can filter many columns. There is no limitation. For instance, we want to select the following values

1. Male in column Gender
2. DE and AT in column Country
3. Beverages in the column Category

How many rows are filtered?

When you activate a filter, you can see how many rows are returned by looking at the bottom left in the status bar

Related articles

• If you use Excel 365, Excel Online, or Excel 2021, you can filter your data dynamically with the FILTER function
• How to Remove All Filters in Excel in one click?
• Excel Tutorial – Filtering your data
• Excel Tutorial – Learn the secrets of Sorting Data
• Intelligent Filters with Excel