Forum Discussion
Trying to sort/filter data (two criteria), but not sure how to best go about it.
I have data organized across multiple columns, with thousands of field rows per column. I am only interested in key data in several columns.
For simplicity sake, I'll call the data in row A, Primary Roles, and the data in row B, Sub-Roles. There are Primary Roles with one or multiple corresponding Sub-Roles. I am trying to find the Primary Roles that have ONLY ONE Sub-Role. Of those Primary Roles, I would then like to filter by specific Sub-Role name.
Ultimately, I need to find the Primary Roles with ONLY ONE Sub-Role associated with it, and of those Primary Roles, filter for specific Sub-Roles by their name (there are various Sub-Role names). There are thousands of Primary Roles, so I need help creating either a formula or rule that can make this search as streamlined as possible. I want to simply key in or filter by Sub-Role name, and know that I'm going to find a list of only those Primary Roles that match the criteria. Using the sort funnels on excel has helped me to narrow down my results from other columns, but that's as far as I've been able to get. I created a pivot table and organized the data in a way that helped to visualize what I'm trying to achieve, but manually sorting through thousands of Primary Role results is not practical at all.
Any ideas or suggestions for what function (or keywords, etc.) or table I can create to achieve what I'm looking for? I have also taken this data over to access to try and build a query, but my knowledge of keyword/query language is not that great. If you know your way around Excel or Access, feel free to let me know if you could help. Thank you!
1 Reply
- mathetesSilver Contributor
If you have the most recent version of Excel, a combination of the UNIQUE and FILTER functions should be able to do it. Is it possible for you to post a representative sample of the kind of data you're working with. Create a set of fictitious data rows if the real stuff is confidential or private.
Without that most recent version of Excel, there are Sort and Filter capabilities on the Data tool bar. The UNIQUE and FILTER functions are more dynamic and powerful.