Using Filters In Numbers

Filters let you view portions of data in your tables based on criteria. You can filter a long table by what is found in a column. You can combine multiple filters to drill down into data.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at how you can use Filters in Numbers.
I'm using Numbers version 3 here and I'm going to show you filtering. 
Filtering is a way to take a large table and only see some of the rows in it. For instance, I have just a list of states and territories here and it has population and coastline. It might be an obvious thing that I want to filter by only states that have coastlines in it. 
It is easy to do that. Up here I select the header above each column and I can say Filter Table. It is going to give me all the values that are contained there. In this case a checkbox so it is only true and false. If I were to filter this one you can see it has all the different values which there is a unique one for each one. So it doesn't make sense to filter by that. But filtering by true makes sense. You can see now I only have the rows where this is checked off. 
You can see it even gives you the row numbers skipping the ones that it is not showing you. So the data is still there you are just not seeing it. It is just an easier way to be able to view the data in the table.
I can very easily Filter Table and change to false and now it is going to basically give me both. So I turn off true and now I can see I am only seeing those. So you can see there is a way to filter and say if there were ten different categories I can filter it and have it show me five out of the ten categories by checking off which ones I want.
Now another thing I can do I can use the Filter button over here, see it next to Format, with the whole table selected and I can add a filter for the entire thing. I can pick the column I want. So let's do population now.
I want it to be states with a population greater than, let's say, five million. You can see that it filters the table taking out all the rest of the states that are there. I can see how many there are.
Now you can combine filters. I've still got this filter in place if I select this table. I've still have the population greater than five million. I can use this interface up here or this interface over here to add another filter. So let's show rows where coastline is true. You can see it adds it here and now I just have states with a population of five million or over and coastline is true. 
I can even add an extra filter. For instance, population is less than ten million. So I've actually filtered the same column twice. Greater than five million and less than ten million. 
It is easy to remove these. Use the little trash can button over here that appears when you rollover or you can just use the checkbox there temporarily turning them off. So it could be something you turn on and off as you need when you are working with the table.
You have tons of criteria for filtering. So you have a set that goes with numbers. You have a set that goes with text. You can do it with dates. Even duration between things. Whether or not cells are blank so you can filter those out as well. It will filter out the entire row based upon what it finds in just one cell in the row. In other words one column going through.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Using Filters In Numbers”

John Spencer

11 years ago

I am very happy with this "using filters in Numbers" However, I can not figure out how to reverse the filter and have all of my rows returned that are not check boxes. I also wanted headings in the text (categories) to print out in the sort. I checked them just to have them show. But I do not necessarily want them to be checked!

Gary Rosenzweig

Filter for false instead of true. Not sure I understand your second question.

Comments Closed.

Using Filters In Numbers

Comments: 2 Responses to “Using Filters In Numbers”

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