Forum Discussion
Filter no choice between number and text
Looking more closely at your image, it appears that we're both working with stock market data. And looking at your two adjacent columns, I have a suggestion:
Why don't you use conditional formatting to differentiate the Up days from the Down? All of the Downs are negative values, the Ups are positive. Excel can automatically show negative numbers in red, positive in black. Put them all into one column which would then be all numeric.
Of course you're interested in size, i.e., magnitude of numbers, not just direction (positive or negative), and that's why what I wrote mentioned Excel will automatically highlight negative NUMBERS in red, positive in black.
I do the same. I also use FILTER and other functions to extract those with largest magnitude (positive or negative) or largest change.....
My main point was to say if you're trying to use the Filter menu tool and running into obstacles because of the numeric vs text matter that you posted about, there are other ways to accomplish your objective. Excel almost always offers users different routes from point A to point B...part of the fun of using it is to explore those alternative routes.