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602 Data List Filtering 101 Data List Filtering 101
If you ever have the good fortune to attend my class on database manage- ment, you’ll hear my spiel on the difference between data and information in the tables in a database (or data list, in Excel-speak). In case you’re the least little bit interested, it goes like this: A data list or the tables that make up
a database consist of a vast quantity of raw data, which simply represents all the stuff that everybody in the company wants stored on a given subject (employees, sales, clients, you name it). For example, suppose that you keep a data list on the sales transactions made by your customers. This data list can very well track such stuff as the customers’ identification numbers, names, addresses, telephone numbers, whether they have a charge account with the store, the maximum amount that they can charge, the purchases that they’ve made (including the dates and amounts), and whether their accounts are due (or overdue).
However, this vast quantity of data stored in the customer data list is not to be confused with the information that particular people in the office want out of the data. For example, suppose that you’re working in the marketing department and you’re about to introduce a line of expensive household items that you want to advertise. You want to limit the advertising to those customers who have a charge account with the store and have purchased at least $5,000 of merchandise in the last six months. Use the data provided in the data list to supply the information to weed out the customers that you need from the list.
On the other hand, suppose that you work in the accounting department and you need to send out nasty notices to all the customers who have charge accounts that are more than 90 days past due. In this case, you want only the data identifying those customers whose accounts are overdue. You couldn’t care less about what was actually purchased. All you care about is reaching these folks and convincing them to pay up. You again use the data provided in the data list to supply the information to weed out the custom- ers that you need from the list.
From these simple examples, it should be clear that the data that supplies information to one group in the company at a particular time is often not the same data that supplies information to another group. In other words, for most people, the data list dispenses information only when you are able to filter out the stuff that you currently don’t want to see, and leaves behind just the stuff that interests you.
Filtering Data
Filtering the data list to leave behind only the information that you want
to work with is exactly the procedure that you follow in Excel. At the most basic level, you use the AutoFilter feature to temporarily hide the display of