fbpx
Search
Close this search box.

Drag to multi-select slicer items [quick tip]

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Hola folks…

My trip to Houston & Dallas was very successful, fun & awesome. I got back home on Friday and instantly I am in another fun, awesome & happy place with my kids, Jo (my wife), rest of the family & friends.

Today, I want to share a very simple yet super awesome trick with you. I learned this from Augie, one of the Houston Masterclass participants.

You can drag slicer items to multi-select them.

Selecting multiple items in a slicer quickly

We know that slicers are powerful, friendly and fun way to filter the pivot tables, pivot charts, power pivot tables and regular tables (only in 2013). They are visual filters that can be used to instantly filter the data (or report). But when it comes to selecting multiple items, slicers can be hard. We must hold CTRL key and tap multiple slicer items one at a time to select them. At least that is how I used to do it.

Do you know we can drag to multi-select?

See this demo:

Drag to select multiple items on your slicers - Quick Excel Tip

How to multi-select slicer items quickly

  1. Select the first item on slicer with mouse.
  2. Drag your mouse pointer to the last item you want to select.
  3. Instantly, all items in-between will also be selected.

Thanks Augie for teaching this to me.

Here are few more quick tips to start your day.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share this tip with your colleagues

Excel and Power BI tips - Chandoo.org Newsletter

Get FREE Excel + Power BI Tips

Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.

Learn & be awesome.

Welcome to Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.

Read my storyFREE Excel tips book

Overall I learned a lot and I thought you did a great job of explaining how to do things. This will definitely elevate my reporting in the future.
Rebekah S
Reporting Analyst
Excel formula list - 100+ examples and howto guide for you

From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.

Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.

Advanced Pivot Table tricks

Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.

Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.

9 Responses to “Drag to multi-select slicer items [quick tip]”

  1. Augie Seaman says:

    Thanks for the Kudos Chandoo!

    Actually I have to pass along the credit to one of my team members back here @ TMIC -- Rhonda Barker -- she's actually the one who showed me this trick!

    Glad to hear the rest of your trip went well, and you're back home with the family =)

    -Augie

    • Jim says:

      I think I'm being a bonehead - I can't get this to work. Could someone detail it even more (even though it appears simple enough) so I can't screw it up?
      _____
      Select the first item on slicer with mouse. - By select, do you mean so that the slicer shows the resizing dots/handles?
      Drag your mouse pointer to the last item you want to select. - To drag my mouse after selecting, I have to put my cursor on the spreadsheet or slicers somewhere? Do I need to hold any modifier keys?

      • Chandoo says:

        @Jim.. Sorry I wans't clear. Simply click on the first item in your slicer as if you are slicing (filtering) the report. Then drag to last item.

        • Jim says:

          I get it now. I thought you were referring to selecting multiple slicer objects at the same time, to make bulk changes to the slicer properties/size/etc., by dragging across the screen. You were actually talking about the items within the slicer itself. Sorry for my confusion.

          Does anyone know how to select multiple slicer objects at the same time, to make bulk changes to the slicer properties/size/etc., without pointing to and clicking on each one of them?

  2. Scott Salerno says:

    The CTRL + Click (non-contiguous) or Shift + Click (contiguous) methods work as well if one desires to select more than one item in a slicer.

  3. Krishna Teja says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Happy Navaratri to you and all my fellows excel lovers.
    Good to see you back. Will you be sharing your experiences in Houston via blog or podcast? I am eagerly waiting....! 🙂

  4. vinayak says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    I ll be very glad if you can share me the excel working of the Drag to multi-select slicer.

  5. thong says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Hope all is well. Can you please share the sample file.

    Thank you so much.

    Thong

  6. Bhawani says:

    Hey,

    Voting Thong - May we have sample file. It would be easy to understand oh i mean it would be very easy.

    Thanks & keep smiling

Leave a Reply