Last week, you saw a quick tip for filtering by selection in Excel 2007. That's helpful when you've found an item in a list, and want to filter for that item.
There's another new feature in the AutoFilter dropdown, in Excel 2010. When you click the drop down arrow in the AutoFilter heading cell, you'll see a new Search box, that wasn't in previous versions of Excel.
This is a great way to find an item in a really long list -- much quicker than scrolling down, and scanning all the list items.
Use the Search Box
For example, if you type "ri" in the Search box, only the cities with "ri" in their name will be left in the drop down list. In the screen shot below, "riv" is in the Search box, and only one city (Riverview) is showing -- the only city with that string of letters in its name.
Press the Enter key to complete the search, and the worksheet is filtered for the selected city names.
Watch the Video
To see the steps in the AutoFilter Search, please watch this short Excel tutorial video.
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I was surprised when I first saw this in a client's worksheet, and thought I'd stumbled into a pivot table.
Scary! In the good old days, you could tell them apart.