Series #1 - Filter, Sort and Query

Written By Ola Akinmade

When creating interactive Spreadsheets and Dashboards for my clients, these are some of my top 10 formulas I use. They are simple to implement but extremely powerful in combination to improve the usability for users, especially those not well versed in Spreadsheets.

What do they do? In short:

FILTER

💡 Filter is essentially the formula version of the built in Filter function embedded in Spreadsheet tools to filter and sort through data arrays. Which might make it seem redundant, but you'd be surprised :)

SORT

💡 Sort is what I would call a "Usability" or "Helper" formula. Meaning it is fairly simple on its own, but can be used in combination with other formulas (such as Filter) to further enhance the UX

QUERY

💡 Query is a fairly new formula, only accessible in Google Sheets. Essentially it enables users to use SQL like language to produce queries to create results otherwise only possible with multiple nested formulas. There are plenty of ways to use them, for now I have only covered a few basics.

Simply click on the picture below to access all slides as well as the working Google Sheets Spreadsheet.
All these topics and more are stuff I cover when doing Spreadsheet crash courses for my clients, so if this is of interest to you, feel free to reach out :)

Ola Akinmade