Create a beautiful, elegant & interactive to-do list with Excel (FREE Template + Tutorial)

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To-do list in Excel - Demo & Free template

In this hands-on tutorial learn how to create a simple, elegant and functional to-do list to track your projects and tasks.

Download FREE To-Do List Excel Template

Don’t want to make your formulas and formatting? You can download my ready-to-use To-Do List file and change the data as per your project.

Click here to download the template.

Step 1: Set up your To-do data tables

We need two tables of data to begin with.

Table1: this is our to-do activity data table. It should have activity, optional due date and status columns at the minimum.

To do activity data table

 

Table 2: This table lists all the possible status options. You can load them with below values (or come up with your own statuses).

to do status options

Step 2: Link Status options to the todo Table

Once we link the “status” and “todo” tables, we can easily update the todo status, as demoed below:

To do this (excuse the pun), defining a name in excel for our todo status options

  1. Select the “todo status” column in our second table
  2. Use “Formula” ribbon > Define Name button (ALT M M), and create a name for this column. I named mine status_options
  3. Go back to the “Todo” table and select the status column.
  4. Go to Data ribbon > Data Validation and set up a List validation with source as status_options

Now our status column is linked with the options we have defined.

Step 3: Create the CANVAS for visual To-Do List

Let’s setup the canvas for our todo list. Add a blank sheet and,

  1. Make three columns wide enough to show the todo activities
  2. Add a title and format it nicely. I used the “shapes” in insert ribbon for this.
  3. Add a footer and do the same.
  4. Add background colors and tidy up as needed.

Here is a high-speed show-reel of my formatting setup.

Step 4: Formula Time

Time for some number crunching. We need to use two formulas to get the ongoing activity list and structure it for our output page.

Add another sheet for the calculations and set up below two formulas.

The formulas

Our first formula (set up in cell B3 in the calculation worksheet) fetches all the ongoing activities and sorts the data using FILTER & SORT functions.

				
					=SORT(FILTER(todo[[Activity]:[Due-date?]],(todo[Status]="Ongoing")+(todo[Status]="")),2,1)
				
			

The second formula rearranges this data in to a single column using the TOCOL() function.

				
					=TOCOLO(B3#)
				
			

LAST STEP: Bring everything together to make the To-Do List

Go the canvas todo list we created in step 3 and get first 12 rows of our TOCOL() output for first column, next 12 rows for the middle column and the next 12 rows for the last column.

Tidy up and format as needed.

Tadaaaa, our To-Do List is ready!

To-do list in Excel - Demo & Free template

Video Tutorial - How to make a To-Do List in Excel?

If you need more help with these instructions, check out the video tutorial I made below or on my YouTube Channel.

Download FREE To-Do List Excel Template

Don’t want to make your formulas and formatting? You can download my ready-to-use To-Do List file and change the data as per your project.

Click here to download the template.

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21 Responses to “How to Filter Odd or Even Rows only? [Quick Tips]”

  1. Vijay says:

    Infact, instead of using =ISEVEN(B3), how about to use =ISEVEN(ROW())

    So it takes away any chance of wrong referencing.

  2. Hui... says:

    I like Daily Dose of Excel

  3. vimal says:

    I like it.

  4. Luke M says:

    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

  5. Debbi says:

    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.

  6. Paul S says:

    Just for clarification, is Ashish looking to filter by even or odd Characters or rows?

  7. Fred says:

    so many functions to learn!

  8. Istiyak says:

    Nice support by chandoo and team as a helpdesk. Give us more to learn and make us awesome. Always be helpful.......

  9. Arps says:

    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,,)

  10. Pippa says:

    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.

  11. Matthew D. Healy says:

    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.

  12. Paulo says:

    Another way =MOD(ROW();2). In this case, must to choose betwen 1 and 0.

  13. Makhan Butt says:

    very different style Odd or Even Rows very easy way to visit this site

    http://www.handycss.com/tips/odd-or-even-rows/

  14. Terhile says:

    Thanks for the tip, it worked like magic, saved having to delete row by row in my database.

  15. majid says:

    Thankssssssssssssssss

  16. Bhanu says:

    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

  17. Adriana says:

    Hi! Could you please help me find a formula to filter by language?
    Thank you!

  18. avinash says:

    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

  19. Arshad Hussain Shah says:

    =IF(EVEN(A1)=A1,"EVEN - do something","ODD - do something else") with iferron (for blank Cell)

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