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AutoFilter
How to create simple filters easily with AutoFilter
One of the really neat things about Calc, is how easy it is to handle large amounts of data. Say you have an address list of all the parents of the children at a school. If you want all parents in just one class, you could of course sort the list by class and then delete all information that's not necessary, but that doesn't make it very user friendly.
This is where the filters come handy.
We'll use an example with a few cars here. Feel free to download the original list if you don't want to type it yourself.
First of all we'll start by doing some practical formatting, to make it look a bit better. Select the headings and make them bold, like this:
Then, go to cell A2. Select the Window menu, and choose Freeze. This is the same as “Freeze Panes” in Microsoft Excel. When doing this, you force Calc to freeze every column to the left of the cell selected, and to freeze every line above the cell selected. It should look like below, where the frozen area is underlined with a black line:
In this case, since we're already in the leftmost column, no columns will be frozen to the left, but line 1 will be frozen. This means that we can scroll down as far as we'd like, and he headings will remain in place.
This step is not needed to get the filters to work, but it makes it a whole lot more tidy, especially when dealing with long lists.
Well, it's time to create the filters.
Now, select column A and B:
Go to the Data menu, then Filter and select AutoFilter. You have now created the filter! It's as easy as that!
Now, say you want to see all the Ford models, click the arrow to the right in the cell of Car Make. You'll get a drop-down list, choose Ford from here.
Calc will automatically hide all lines with other car makes, and leave only the lines containing Ford in the Car make column.
Now click the arrow in the Model column, and you'll see all the models listed in the drop-down list.
Please notice that the arrow with the Car Make column turned blue when you selected a car make. This is an indication that something has been filtered.
If you want to get all car makes back, go to the filter above Care Make, and select “All”:
If you have many columns and have used several filters, it's probably quicker to click somewhere in the heading, i.e. A1, and go to the Data menu, where you select Filter and Remove Filter. That's up to you.
We'll get a lot more into AutoFilters and other filters later, we're only scratching the surface now, but this is enough to get you started and do useful stuff with large lists!
I also recommend that you read the lesson on DataPilots (or Pivot Tables, as it's called in Microsoft Excel).
This is where the filters come handy.
We'll use an example with a few cars here. Feel free to download the original list if you don't want to type it yourself.
First of all we'll start by doing some practical formatting, to make it look a bit better. Select the headings and make them bold, like this:
Then, go to cell A2. Select the Window menu, and choose Freeze. This is the same as “Freeze Panes” in Microsoft Excel. When doing this, you force Calc to freeze every column to the left of the cell selected, and to freeze every line above the cell selected. It should look like below, where the frozen area is underlined with a black line:
In this case, since we're already in the leftmost column, no columns will be frozen to the left, but line 1 will be frozen. This means that we can scroll down as far as we'd like, and he headings will remain in place.
This step is not needed to get the filters to work, but it makes it a whole lot more tidy, especially when dealing with long lists.
Well, it's time to create the filters.
Now, select column A and B:
Go to the Data menu, then Filter and select AutoFilter. You have now created the filter! It's as easy as that!
Now, say you want to see all the Ford models, click the arrow to the right in the cell of Car Make. You'll get a drop-down list, choose Ford from here.
Calc will automatically hide all lines with other car makes, and leave only the lines containing Ford in the Car make column.
Now click the arrow in the Model column, and you'll see all the models listed in the drop-down list.
Please notice that the arrow with the Car Make column turned blue when you selected a car make. This is an indication that something has been filtered.
If you want to get all car makes back, go to the filter above Care Make, and select “All”:
If you have many columns and have used several filters, it's probably quicker to click somewhere in the heading, i.e. A1, and go to the Data menu, where you select Filter and Remove Filter. That's up to you.
We'll get a lot more into AutoFilters and other filters later, we're only scratching the surface now, but this is enough to get you started and do useful stuff with large lists!
I also recommend that you read the lesson on DataPilots (or Pivot Tables, as it's called in Microsoft Excel).