5 minutes

How to filter your Excel data in seconds!

You can instantly transform your Excel spreadsheet into an interactive web application that lets you filter through data by clicking on tags. Much cleaner & easier than Excel!

3 Steps to getting started:

  1. To make filtering Excel data 100x easier and faster, we'll be using a tool called Polymer Search.
  2. Upload your dataset there (it will be encrypted). An AI will also analyze your data for you.
  3. Launch the Polymer Site (an interactive web application) and start filtering by clicking on tags!

In seconds, your Excel spreadsheet will be fully interactive, allowing you to filter through anything you want by searching or clicking on tags, saving hours of time.

People who use Polymer Search report less data fatigue and more productivity in their work.

On top of that, Polymer provides access to some powerful data analysis tools such as the ‘Auto-Explainer’ feature.

Filtering multiple columns

Filtering multiple columns is really simple! There are 2 ways for filtering columns:

  1. Filtering IN
  2. Filtering OUT

Filtering IN: This is the simplest: click on multiple tags and it’ll automatically show results containing both those tags.

Filtering OUT: At the top corner of the tag, there is a minus button. Click on that to filter those results out.

reset data

Clearing filters:

To clear filters, click on the tags at the top to remove them, or press clear to remove all of them at once:

reste

Filtering dates

You can filter dates by using the left sidebar. It will allow you to select a period (e.g. past 30 days) or a start & end date.

how to filter excel dates

Optional:

Polymer Search automatically buckets your dates into year and/or quarter (e.g. 2015 Q4) as best deemed fit for your dataset.

Most times, it's best to leave it as default, but if you want to change this setting, you can do so by clicking on the settings (cogwheel icon) on the sidebar:

settings

Then select your own bucket size (yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly or daily):

bucketing dates

Filtering numbers

Similar to dates, if you have a wide range of numbers, Polymer will automatically group/bucket them for you, allowing easy filtering:

filter numbers

Similar to filtering by date, you can customize how large you want the bucket size to be by going into that categories' settings.

filtering excel into multiple sheets

For example, a bucket size of 10 will filter results by 0-10, 10-20, 20-30 and so forth.

Filtering Excel into multiple sheets

On the top right of your table should be a download current results button.

Once you've filtered your data, you can quickly export it into multiple sheets:

filtering excel into multi

This download button saves the current view, allowing to quickly filter then save that view into a separate csv file.

How to filter cells containing specific text

Polymer Search has a very cool feature: it has an in-built search engine powered by AI!

For instance, if you want to filter cells containing specific text, you just type it into the search bar and it'll generate those results for you.

Example

If I type in 'mar' in the search bar, it will show all results containing those letters:

how to filter cells containing specific text

On top of that, the search engine will provide auto-suggestions, like Google itself!

auto suggestion search engine

Overall

Polymer's UI is very straightforward even for tech-unsavvy people. Once you learn a few basic things, you'll be able to navigate through the tool without having to look up guides every time.

Compared to Excel, you won't experience data fatigue and it will save you hundreds of hours from analyzing and filtering data.

Get started with filtering and analyzing data here.

Posted on
December 22, 2021
under Blog
December 22, 2021
Written by
Rand Owens
Founding team member at Motive (Formerly KeepTruckin) and passionate about all things Marketing, RevOps, and Go-To-Market. VP of Marketing @ Polymer Search.

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