Yesterday we have posted how to use excel combo charts to group related time events. In the comments, Art Johnson says,
This is awesome. I love this blog. I have dealt with this issue before. Usually my issue is monthly anomolies caused by fiscal months of 4 weeks followed by 4 weeks, and then 5 weeks in each quarter. This causes a spike in March, June, Sept., and Dec. It’s one reason I prefer to look at quarterly trends rather than monthly. This chart is quite nice to see these effects. Is there a way to just toggle between two charts? One of weekends and one of weekdays? […]
This effect can be easily achieved with a cup of coffee, one combo box form control and the good old IF formula. Look at it yourself.

I am not going to provide the complete recipe. But here is the gist. I am sure you can take the help of that coffee in case you are stuck.
- Add a combo-box form control using forms tool bar or Developer ribbon. (not able to find the developer toolbar in excel 2007? see this)
- Set the input range for combo box to two cells where the values “weekdays” and “weekends” are mentioned.
- Also set the “cell link” for the combo box to some free cell like IV32000
- Now change the dummy series (the range where the column chart values for zebra lines are mentioned) values to a formula.
- The formula should be able to change the dummy values based on the selection in combo box. This is your homework to figure out.
- That is all. You now have a chart that dynamically groups events based on user selection. Pretty cool eh ?
Download the workbook and see it yourself
Click here to download the workbook and play with it.
Where can you use this technique?
Oh, several places. To begin with,
- To highlight new products vs. older products in a product-wise sales chart
- To highlight top 10 vs. bottom 10 values in a big chart
- To highlight values of a certain product / project vis-a-vis the whole set of values
What do you think about this idea?
Have you ever tried similar ideas in a report or dashboard? What is your experience? Personally I find dynamic charts more effective compared to static charts. Users like them, they like to play with the control(s) and make their own observations. Do you agree?
PS: If you are looking for a way to compare 2 KPIs or metrics in charts, see the part 5 of dashboard tutorial













21 Responses to “How to Filter Odd or Even Rows only? [Quick Tips]”
Infact, instead of using =ISEVEN(B3), how about to use =ISEVEN(ROW())
So it takes away any chance of wrong referencing.
I like Daily Dose of Excel
I like it.
Just a heads up, you do need to have the Analysis ToolPak add-in activated to use the ISEVEN / ISODD functions. An alternative to ISEVEN would be:
=MOD(ROW(),2)=0
rather than use a formula, couldn't you enter "true" in first cell and "false" in the second and drag it down and than filter on true or false.
Just for clarification, is Ashish looking to filter by even or odd Characters or rows?
so many functions to learn!
Nice support by chandoo and team as a helpdesk. Give us more to learn and make us awesome. Always be helpful.......
In case you want to delete instead of filter,
IF your data is in Sheet1 column A
Put this in Sheet2 column A and drag down
=OFFSET(Sheet1!A$1,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
(This is to delete even rows)
To delete odd rows :
=OFFSET(Sheet1!A$2,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
If your numbered cells did not correspond to rows, the answer would be even simpler:
=MOD([cell address],2), then filter by 0 to see evens or 1 to see odds.
I sometimes do this using an even simpler method. I add a new column called "Sign" and put the value of 1 in the first row, say cell C2 if C1 contains the header. Then in C3 I put the formula =-1 * C2, which I copy and paste into the rest of the rows (so C4 has =-1 * C3 and so forth). Now I can just apply a filter and pick either +1 or -1 to see half the rows.
Another way, which works if I want three possibilities: in C2 I put the value 1, in C3 I put the value 2, in C4 I put the value 3, then in C5 I put the formula =C2 then I copy C5 and paste into all the remaining rows (so C6 gets =C3, C7 gets =C4, etc.). Now I can apply a filter and pick the value 1, 2, or 3 to see a third of the rows.
Extending this approach to more than 3 cases is left as an exercise for the reader.
Another way =MOD(ROW();2). In this case, must to choose betwen 1 and 0.
[...] How to Filter Even or Odd rows only [...]
very different style Odd or Even Rows very easy way to visit this site
http://www.handycss.com/tips/odd-or-even-rows/
Thanks for the tip, it worked like magic, saved having to delete row by row in my database.
Thanks!
Thankssssssssssssssss
Hi Chandoo- First of all thanks for the trick. It helped me a lot. Here I have one more challenge. Having filtered the data based on odd. I want to paste data in another sheet adjacent to it. How can I do that?
For Example-
A 1 odd
B 3 odd
C 4 even
D 6 even
I have fileted the above data for odd and want to copy the "This is odd number" text in adjacent/next sheet here. How can I do that. After doing this my data should look like this
A 1 odd This is odd number
B 3 odd This is odd number
C 4 even
D 6 even
Hi! Could you please help me find a formula to filter by language?
Thank you!
Chandoo SIR,
I HAVE A DATA IN EXCEL ROWS LIKE BELOW IS THERE ANY FORMULA OR A WAY WHERE I CAN INSTRUCT I CAN MAKE CHANGES , MEANS I WANT TO WRITE ONLY , THE FIG IS FRESH, BUT IN BELOW ROW IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TAKE THE SOME WORDS FROM FIGS AND MAKE IN PLURAL FORM , WHILE USING '' ARE'' LIKE BELOW
The fig is fresh - row 1
Figs are fresh - row 2
The Pomegranate is red - row 3
Pomegranates are red - row 4
=IF(EVEN(A1)=A1,"EVEN - do something","ODD - do something else") with iferron (for blank Cell)