Why Your Colour-Coded Excel Data Deserves a Better Filter

If you’re already using colour to organise your Excel spreadsheets, here’s some good news — you can filter by that colour too. Excel filter by colour lets you instantly show only the rows that match a specific colour — whether that’s a background fill or a font colour. It’s one of those features that feels like it should be complicated, but it really isn’t.

First, a Quick Note About Header Rows

Before we dive in, just make sure your table or list has a header row — that’s the row at the top with your column labels like “Task”, “Status”, and so on. Excel puts the filter drop-down arrows in that row. If you don’t have one, Excel will treat your first row of data as the header, which means it won’t show up in your filtered results. Easily avoided!

Switching the Filter On

If you haven’t already got filtering switched on, you can enable it in two ways:

Go to the Home tab and use the Sort & Filter button
Or head to the Data tab and click Filter

Either way, you’ll see small drop-down arrows appear in your header row. That’s your cue that filtering is ready to go.

Excel table showing filter drop-down arrows in the header row, ready to use Excel filter by colour

Filtering by Background Colour

Click the drop-down arrow in the column you want to filter. You’ll see a Filter by Colour option roughly in the middle of the menu. Hover over it and Excel shows you all the colours it’s found in that column. Click the one you want and — that’s it. Your list instantly narrows down to just those rows.

You can switch to a different colour at any point by going back into the same drop-down. Just bear in mind you can only filter by one colour at a time.

Excel filter drop-down menu displaying the Filter by Colour option with available colour choices

Clearing the Filter

When you’re done, clearing the filter is just as straightforward. Go back to the drop-down and either:

Click the colour again to deselect it
Or choose Clear Filter From [Column Name]

Job done. Your full list is back.

Does This Work in Excel on the Web?

Yes! Excel on the web has the same Filter by Colour option. The steps are identical, so if you’re working in a browser rather than the desktop app, you’re not missing out.

Filtering by Font Colour

Here’s a bonus that catches people out: Filter by Colour works on font colour too, not just background fills. So if you’ve highlighted certain cells by changing the text colour rather than the background, Excel can filter by that as well. Same process, same menu — just look for the font colour options when you hover over Filter by Colour.

Excel filter drop-down showing font colour filter options in Excel

A Simple Feature With Real Practical Value

This isn’t a feature you’ll use every day — but if you colour code your spreadsheets to flag priorities, track progress, or categorise tasks, it becomes genuinely useful. Rather than scrolling through to find all your red “Urgent” rows, you can pull them up in two clicks.

Simple, quick, and surprisingly satisfying.

Created with the help of Claude AI from an original transcript.