PivotTable Filters in Excel

Simple PivotTable filters let you limit the table display to a part of the available data.

They have a place in PivotTables, especially for semi-permanent filters that you want to apply broadly.  Instead of filtering the original data feed or list, the PivotTable can use a large list which is narrowed down to what you want to see.

We’ll start from this worksheet.

Suppose you want to know which products are the most exported to a specific country. What you can do is filter by the ‘Country’ field.

In the PivotTable Fields pane, drag the Country item down to the Filter section.

Excel adds a Country pull-down above your PivotTable.

Click the filter drop-down next to All and select a name of the country you want to filter. I have selected Canada for this example.  The PivotTable rows and values all change to show only the filtered data.

The selector lets you choose a single item at a time, select ‘Select Multiple Items’ to check more than one item.  It’s the equivalent of a logical OR.  In this case, the European ones ( “France” AND “Germany”).