Chapter 6. Focusing on Specific Data Using Filters

6. Focusing on Specific Data Using Filters

Chapter at a Glance

In this chapter, you will learn to:
	Limit the data that appears on your screen.
	Manipulate list data.
	Define a valid set of values for a range of cells.

Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007 enables you to manage huge data collections, but storing more than 1,000,000 rows of data doesn't help you make business decisions unless you have the ability to zero in on the most important data in a worksheet (whether that data represents the 10 busiest days in a month or low revenue that you might need to reevaluate). Office Excel 2007 offers a number of powerful and flexible tools with which you can limit the data displayed in your worksheet. After your worksheet displays the subset of the data you need to make a decision, you can perform calculations on that data. You can discover what percentage of monthly sales were made up by the 10 best days in the month, find your total sales for particular days of the week, or locate the slowest business day of the month.

Just as you can limit the data displayed by your worksheets, you can limit the data entered into them as well. Setting rules for data entered into cells enables you to catch many of the most common data entry errors, such as entering values that are too small or too large, or attempting to enter a word in a cell that requires a number. If you add a validation rule to worksheet cells after data has been entered into them, you can circle any invalid data so that you know what to correct.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to limit the data that appears on your screen, manipulate list data, and create validation rules that limit data entry to appropriate values.

See Also

Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries on pages xxviilxiii.

Important

Before you can use the practice sites provided for this chapter, you need to install them from the book's companion CD to their default location. See "Using the Book's CD" on page xiii for more information.