Excel University Blog

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FILTER

How to Filter in Excel

By Jeff Lenning | May 2, 2023 |

Hello there! Are you looking to learn how to filter in Excel? You’ve come to the right place! Filtering is an incredibly useful feature in Excel that allows you to quickly and easily sort through large amounts of data to find exactly what you’re looking for. In this article, we’ll explore: Let’s get to it!…

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Man sitting at a computer with an hourglass trying to learn how to get better at Excel

How to Get Better at Excel (Without Wasting Time)

By Excel University | April 25, 2022 |

Wondering how to get better at Excel? Whether you’re a new user or a pro, these are some easy steps to help you quickly master new skills.

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These Are the Top 9 Most Useful Advanced Excel Functions

By Excel University | March 15, 2022 |

Looking to make work easier? Instead of trying to do it all, focus on learning these nine useful advanced Excel functions.

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PivotTable Text Values Alternative with FILTER

By Jeff Lenning | October 12, 2021 |

This is the third and final post in the PivotTable Text Values Alternative series, where we are discussing alternatives to displaying text values in PivotTables. In the first post, we used Power Query as an alternative. In the second post, we combined multiple text values. In this post, we’ll use the FILTER function as an…

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Mapping Table without a Helper Column

By Jeff Lenning | September 7, 2021 |

A mapping table is a handy way to automatically translate labels between systems and reports. As with just about anything in Excel, there are many ways to implement a mapping table. For example, we could create a helper column to store the amounts with the SUMIFS function as I discussed in this Journal of Accountancy…

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Aggregate with OR Logic

By Jeff Lenning | December 14, 2020 |

The family of IFS functions, such as SUMIFS and COUNTIFS, use AND logic when evaluating multiple conditions. In other words, all conditions must be true to be included. And generally, this logic works well. However, there are situations when we’d like to use OR logic instead. That is, any of the conditions can be true…

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Dependent Drop Downs with FILTER

By Jeff Lenning | November 17, 2020 |

This post shows how to create multiple dependent drop downs using the FILTER function. These are also known as cascading or conditional drop downs, where the choices in a drop down depend on the selection made in a previous drop down. The technique presented enables you to create as many drop downs as you need,…

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FILTER GOAT CalCPA Article

By Jeff Lenning | November 10, 2020 |

Question: What is the best Excel function? Typical responses are VLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH, XLOOKUP and SUMIFS, which are among Excel’s highlights. Follow-up question: If there was a function that could do the work of these, would it be the Greatest of All Time (GOAT)? Well, the FILTER function is too new to declare it the…

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FILTER vs VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS

By Jeff Lenning | October 8, 2020 |

In this video, which is part of Microsoft’s Modern Excel webcast series, we’ll cover the basic syntax of FILTER and then see how it compares to VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, XLOOKUP, and SUMIFS. The question is: can FILTER accomplish the tasks we typically associate with these powerful Excel functions? Note: not all versions of Excel contain the…

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Perform Lookups with FILTER 3

By Jeff Lenning | October 5, 2020 |

This is the third post in this series, where we are doing lookup tasks with the FILTER function instead of VLOOKUP. In the first post, we discovered that the FILTER function supports multiple return columns. In the second post, we discovered that it also supports multiple lookup columns. In this post, we’ll discover that it…

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