Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Performing Calculations while Filtering.

Performing Calculations while Filtering

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 17, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


1

Filtering a list means displaying only a part of it. You provide the criteria you want used, and then Excel displays only those list records that match the criteria. Filtering is especially useful if you have a large list and you want to work with only a subset of the records in the list. Other ExcelTips have described different ways you can create and apply filters to your worksheets.

When you are using the advanced filtering capabilities of Excel you can perform calculations during the filtering process. For instance, let's assume you have a large inventory list in a worksheet, and you want to filter the list to show only those records that were in a particular department and that have a higher-than-average profit. The inventory is contained in starts at cell A6 (with your column headings) and the profit is listed in column I. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Example inventory data in a worksheet.

You can use an advanced filter by setting up your criteria in other cells. For instance, let's say that your criteria are in the cell range A1:B2. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. Example filtering criteria.

Row 1 contains the names of the columns in your datasheet that you want compared in the filtering. Thus, cell A1 contains the name "Item" because you want the value under it (in cell A2) to be used in filtering the data table based on the contents of the Item column. There is no column name in cell B1 because you aren't keying the criteria on a column's contents; you want it based on a calculation. Here are the formulas you should place in cells A2 and B2:

Cell Formula
A2 ="W2*"
B2 =I7>AVERAGE($I$7:$I$42)

This example provides for a text comparison related to the department number (in cell A2) and a comparison of the profit for the item (I7, which is a relative cell reference and therefore changes for each comparison) to the average profit for the entire inventory ($I$7:$I$42, which is an absolute reference and therefore does not change for each comparison). If an absolute reference had not been used for the AVERAGE function, the wrong results would have been generated by the filtering.

When you apply an advanced filter to your inventory data (as described in other ExcelTips), the result, using the above criteria, is that only those records that had a profit greater than the average (the average in I7:I42) were displayed.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11630) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Performing Calculations while Filtering.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Potential Shortcut Key Problems

When configuring Word so that it matches your preference in shortcut keys, you need to be careful about what shortcut ...

Discover More

Removing Blank Pages at the End of Your Document

You go to print out your document, and all of a sudden notice that there was a blank page that printed at the end. This ...

Discover More

Limiting Input to Two Decimal Places

When entering data in a worksheet, you may want to exercise some degree of control on the values that can be entered. ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Enabling Filters by Default

Filtering can be a powerful way to work with large amounts of data in a worksheet. If you use filtering quite a bit, you ...

Discover More

Displaying Multiple Filtered Colors

The filtering capabilities of Excel are quite helpful in taming a large amount of data. While you can filter by color, ...

Discover More

Removing Filters and Unhiding Rows and Columns on Multiple Worksheets

Need to remove filters and display all rows and columns in all your worksheets? It is not easy to do manually, but with a ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 2 + 3?

2022-09-17 11:10:09

J. Woolley

Consider use of AutoFIlter instead.
See https://excelribbon.tips.net/T006612_Using_AutoFiltering.html


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.