Part I: Getting Started with Excel
FIGURE 4.25
Specifying a more complex numeric filter
Also, you can right-click a cell and use the Filter command on the shortcut menu. This
menu item leads to several additional filtering options that enable you to filter data based
on the contents of the selected cell or by formatting.
As you may expect, when you use filtering, the total row is updated to show the total only for the visible rows.
When you copy data from a filtered table, only the visible data is copied. In other words,
rows that are hidden by filtering aren’t copied. This filtering makes it easy to copy a subset
of a larger table and paste it to another area of your worksheet. Keep in mind, though, that
the pasted data is not a table—it’s just a normal range. You can, however, convert the cop-
ied range to a table.
To remove filtering for a column, click the drop-down in the row header and select Clear
Filter. If you’ve filtered using multiple columns, it may be faster to remove all filters by
choosing Home ➪ Editing ➪ Sort & Filter ➪ Clear.
Filtering a table with slicers
Another way to filter a table is to use one or more slicers. This method is less flexible but
more visually appealing. Slicers are particularly useful when the table will be viewed by
novices or those who find the normal filtering techniques too complicated. Slicers are very
visual, and it’s easy to see exactly what type of filtering is in effect. A disadvantage of slic-
ers is that they take up a lot of room on the screen.
To add one or more slicers, activate any cell in the table and choose Table Tools Design ➪
Tools ➪ Insert Slicer. Excel responds with a dialog box that displays each header in the
table (see Figure 4.26).
