Hi, there is (an awful!) spreadsheet which is used in our organisation to help marry up what people want vs the most likely order code that needs to be used.
Effectively the most commonly used phrases have been entered into a spreadsheet to describe Colour, Length and Type of Material.
(I haven't been allowed to influence that, I'm just tiniest of tiny cogs!)
People use the "data / filter" function to find the order codes they need, but it's proving really time-consuming to have to click through to change the filters on each occasion.
Somebody asked (not unreasonably!) if there's a better way of doing the actual filtering - maybe something whereby there was a cell at the top of each column. And when text was entered into it, that became the search string which would then filter that column and show only cells containing that search string. (i.e. i.e. it would act in the same way as a filter, but without having to reset the filters each time)
I recommended using forms and drop-down menus but was shot down straight away because these spreadsheets have literally thousands of different entries for each field. So scrolling through those long lists to tick the box you need could be just as time-consuming.
I've put a quick table below which (hopefully) illustrates what we are trying to acheive:
<tbody>
</tbody>
(Thanks in advance for any pointers you could give!)
Best
Neil
Effectively the most commonly used phrases have been entered into a spreadsheet to describe Colour, Length and Type of Material.
(I haven't been allowed to influence that, I'm just tiniest of tiny cogs!)
People use the "data / filter" function to find the order codes they need, but it's proving really time-consuming to have to click through to change the filters on each occasion.
Somebody asked (not unreasonably!) if there's a better way of doing the actual filtering - maybe something whereby there was a cell at the top of each column. And when text was entered into it, that became the search string which would then filter that column and show only cells containing that search string. (i.e. i.e. it would act in the same way as a filter, but without having to reset the filters each time)
I recommended using forms and drop-down menus but was shot down straight away because these spreadsheets have literally thousands of different entries for each field. So scrolling through those long lists to tick the box you need could be just as time-consuming.
I've put a quick table below which (hopefully) illustrates what we are trying to acheive:
| Colour | Length | Material | Order Code | |
| Search Fields | *enter search sting* | *enter search sting* | *enter search sting* | |
| red | 1 | wood | AC764G | |
| orange | 1.3 | metal | 54BCCP | |
| blue | 1.3 | plastic | ACCCA |
<tbody>
</tbody>
(Thanks in advance for any pointers you could give!)
Best
Neil
