Excel 365’s FILTER() function is great for getting a cut of data that meets your criteria. But what if you need to filter and then show non-adjacent columns? Something like below. In this article, let me show you a few options to get discrete columns after filtering with the FILTER function.
Using CHOOSECOLS with FILTER()
Imagine you have a table data named “staff” and you want to see all the staff who joined in year 2021. We can use below FILTER function for that.
=FILTER(staff, YEAR(staff[date of join])=2021)This will provide a list of all staff who joined in year 2021, as depicted below.
But we don’t want all columns, just ID, Gender, Salary and Leave Balance.
To see just columns 1,2,7 & 8 of this filtered data, we can use below formula.
=CHOOSECOLS(
FILTER(staff, YEAR(staff[date of join])=2021),
1,2,7,8)This will give you exactly what you need without anything else.
What if I need to get data, but the column order is different from original data…
Say, you do want the columns 2,6,8&9 but you want them to show up in the order 6,8,2&9 in the final output.
You can still use the CHOOSECOLS function like below.
=CHOOSECOLS(
FILTER(staff, YEAR(staff[date of join])=2021),
6,8,2,9)How to get columns from a list of header names
If you want to use a range of column names and show filtered data for only those columns, we can use XMATCH along with CHOOSECOLS and FILTER, as demoed below.
- Set up your column headers in a range like Z5:AC5
- Now, we can use XMATCH to find the positions of these headers. =XMATCH(Z5:AC5, staff[#headers])
- When you pass the result of XMATCH to CHOOSECOLS, you can pick these columns.
=CHOOSECOLS(
FILTER(staff,YEAR(staff[Date of Join])=2021),
XMATCH(Z5:AC5,staff[#Headers]))How does this work…
- Let’s go inside out.
- The FILTER() function gets all the staff data for people whose joining date is in 2021.
- Range Z5:AC5 holds the names of the columns we want to see.
- XMATCH(Z5:AC5, staff[#Headers]) will tell you the column numbers for the columns you want by looking them up in the table header row.
- CHOOSECOLS() will then return those exact columns
17 Responses to “Custom Number Formats – Colors”
You are right, Chandoo. I was playing with the colour numbers last week and some of them don't appear different from each other. Others are totally different from yours.
@Duncan
Each version of Excel, post 2003, renders colors slightly differently
Different language versions may also have different default color palettes
Hello in french
excel 2010
colo1 = couleur1 = black
[couleur1]; [couleur2]; etc..
@Hui, thank you very much again for this great post.
However - under Excel 2007, Hungarian version your solution does not work with color names. I've tried both English and Hungarian names, but drops an error message "not valid formats"
Do you have any idea how to solve this issue?
thanks in advance
@Andras
Without a Hungarian version of Excel 2003 I don't think I can assist
Have you tried using the colour numbers? I couldn't get the names to work (despite using an english version of excel). but it did work with the numbers though. I left out the "u" and was easily able to produce burgundy using [color9]
Here a possible solution: find an English version of Excel, write there the formats using English names, then open the file in the Hungarian version and see the translation.
In Excel 2007 I can't get the colour names to work e.g Sea Green but the numbers do e.g color3 - colour3 does not work so I must bow to the country that has stolen my language (ha ha!)
Hey chandoo, nice Tip!
Wouldn't be easier just apply some conditional formatting for negative numbers and another for positive numbers? Or there's some cases that you can't do that?
Unfortunately the TEXT function doesn't color the cell as number formatting does.
Hi Hui,
Great post Sir, love the new way of formatting with color numbers.
I am using 2007, and it leads me to the last color number 56.
Thanks Hui.
[…] explains how to set up custom number formats with a wide array of […]
Thanks Hui - works a treat!
Thank you, very helpful.
Trying to figure out if it is possible to apply color only to a part of the cell?
E.g. I have a value formatted as Accounting with a currency symbol.
Those I find somewhat distracting though necessary. If I could make them less obtrusive by coloring them gray while the number would stay black, that would be great. Tried tinkering with the format string, but didn't get the desired result. Single color for complete cell value works, but coloring just part of it could not be achieved. Maybe somebody managed that?
Exactly what I was looking for - thank you!
colour in the Australian doesn't work - we have to go American and no problem.
I always thought is was 56 colours notice you have 57. Cool.
thanks
Analir Pisani
Customised Microsoft Office Training Specialist
Sydney - Australia
http://www.azsolutions.com.au
Thank You!