When you analyze your tables in Google Sheets, very often you need only a part of the information, while the table may contain dozens of various datasets. What's more, a bunch of various values may simply interfere.
Sure, you can always duplicate the table and delete those temporarily unwanted values. But isn't it a waste of time?
That is when filters in Google Sheets lend a helping hand.
So, what is a "filter"? It's one of many Google Sheets options that lets you hide a part of data that you don't need at the moment. This way you don't need to delete the data. You simply hide it temporarily and can display it back any time.
Besides, this enables you to sort the data. Isn't that a pleasant perk? 😊
How to filter your data in Google Sheets?
To filter your table, you need to select the range of interest manually.
But something tells me you have loads of data. You wouldn't filter it otherwise, wouldn't you?
So, to do the job faster, I advise you to select entire columns. I explained how to do that in one of my previous articles.
If you want to filter the entire table, just click its any cell and go to Data > Filter right away:
Or simply use a corresponding button on the Google Sheets toolbar:
So, the filter is there. Each column header contains kind of an upside-down triangle icon meaning that the filter is active.
Now, let's try and adjust it.
Filter by values in Google Sheets
Today we'll cover the most basic filter option - filter by value. Decide by which column you'd like to filter first and click the triangle icon next to that column header:
Uncheck all the values you want to hide temporarily and click OK.
You'll notice that some of the data has disappeared from the screen right away. Don't worry, the entries weren't deleted. They are there, in your table, you just don't see them because of the filter.
You can sort the remained values either A to Z or Z to A:
If necessary, you can always set additional filters. I'll do that using the Product column, to see the information about Dark Chocolate only:
As a result, both filters are applied to the whole table and there are even fewer entries than before:
The rows we see now meet our two requirements.
So, filtering the table by values is not a rocket science. However, this method is enough if you have a relatively small table with a few parameters that you want to display.
Will that be enough if the list of values contains 100+ entries? Well, that's a story for another day.
Next time you'll learn how to apply filters by conditions in Google Sheets and share different filtering results with different people within one document.
