Filter bold text

There are cases when the data you have contains lines with bold text that are different from the rest of lines. Autofilter needs to be tricked in order to be able to select only bold or non-bold text.

Here you can find the sample file used in this post. You can copy from the Data Template sheet to exercise yourself.

The file was used also for showing how to Convert report into data table.

Jump to

Step 1. Select all bold cells

  1. Select only the column containing the text you want to filter by. In the attached sample, sheet SelectBoldData, column B
  2. Press Ctrl+f and click Options>>. Here, click Format=> Font (1) and select Bold. Click Ok.
  3. Click on Find All (2)
  4. Click on the first result (3) and press Ctrl+a to select all. The bold formatted cells will be all selected (see on the right, circled with blue)
  5. Click Close (4). Do NOT click on the sheet!

Step 2. Apply a filterable format

Here you can use your imagination. It really doesn’t matter since you can remove any formatting after you’re done with it. I use the default color, yellow. Remember to apply only on the bold cells. If you clicked on the sheet and changed the selection, go again to step 1. 

Step 3. Filter your data

Now, that all bold cells have a filterable format, use Autofilter to keep/remove the formatted lines.

Hints

  1. Once you filtered the data, it’s a good practice to add column and mark the lines with a text. It’s easier, especially if you want to remove any coloring or you want to export data into a file that doesn’t support formatting, like csv.
  2. To switch Autofilter on or off you can use Ctrl+Shift+l.
  3. Always select the whole sheet before applying Autofilter. You can do this by clicking on the sheet selector button: 
  4. Do not use Ctrl+a when you have non contiguous data. It will select only the data around the active cell, up to the next blank.