Excel help

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
16,095
Location
North West
Basically work have an excel file detailing purchases that have been made. They have columns for various details. At the head of the column they have a box. In the box you can select say "Joe Bloggs" and it will list all of the orders requested by Joe Bloggs.

The problem is these functions no longer work. I have checked on a previous page of the spreadsheet where they work and I cannot find anything different.

For a start, on this particular sheet it doesn't list all of the names in that column (there are blank rows between columns as the orders have to be input in the correct order number). It also won't do anything.

On the sheet that works - the box lists all of the names of the people who have requested orders. When you select the name - it just shows orders shown by that particular person.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
From what I can gather (I'm slightly confused) it's just a standard autofilter. If it's not working on the new sheet, go data (at the top), filter, autofilter, to disable it, then reapply the autofilter and see if it works.

This may be way off the mark but at least it's a start and can rule out the most basic solution.
 
When I untick autofilter the actual drop menus disappear. When I re-tick it they don't re-appear.

Bah!
 
For a start, on this particular sheet it doesn't list all of the names in that column (there are blank rows between columns as the orders have to be input in the correct order number). It also won't do anything.

This may be the issue. Auto Filter only works on complete data. When you have blanks Excel struggles to work out where the data starts or finishes.

Try populating the blanks with 0, or a dash (-) and see if that helps.
 
Make sure you've selected the row that contains the column titles before you try re-applying the autofilter (or select all the data including the titles, this is probably the safest option).

Edit: Blanks are fine using the autofilter, they'll just show up as (Blanks) in the dropdown.
 
Last edited:
I think that's sorted it. I cannot believe that it was that simple.

Many thanks. To be honest I don't know why they didn't use a DB rather than an excel file - although I don't think there's enough requests per-month to warrant the need for a DB.

Highlight all the data that applies before engaging the autofilter.
 
Back
Top Bottom