Show or Hide AutoFilter Arrows in Excel & Google Sheets

Written by

Editorial Team

Reviewed by

Laura Tsitlidze

Last updated on April 12, 2023

This tutorial demonstrates how to show or hide AutoFilter arrows in Excel and Google Sheets.

 

hide autofilter arrows 3

 

Show AutoFilter Arrows

When you filter data in Excel, filter arrows appear in the heading of your data range. Say you have the following data set with Product Name in Column B and Sales in Column C.

 

show or hide autofilter initial data

 

  1. To display AutoFilter arrows and filter data, first click anywhere in the data range (here, B1:C9). In the Ribbon, go to Home > Sort & Filter > Filter.

 

show autofilter 1

 

This displays AutoFilter arrows in the header data (Row 1) next to Product Name and Sales.

 

show autofilter 2

 

  1. Now say you want to filter your data, for example, to show only products that have sales greater than $1,000. Click on the filter arrow next to Sales (cell C1), go to Number Filters, and choose Greater Than…

 

show autofilter 3

 

  1. In the pop-up window, is greater than is already set as the criteria. Type 1000 into the box to the right, and then click OK.

 

show autofilter 4

 

  1. As a result, only rows with Sales in Column C greater than $1,000 are displayed (with the row numbers highlighted in blue).

 

show autofilter 5

 

As you can see, AutoFilter arrows in the header row are still displayed. Read on for how to hide these arrows.

Hide AutoFilter Arrows

To filter data while hiding AutoFilter arrows, use an advanced filter. Let’s use the same example with Product Name and Sales. Add criteria value(s) in form of a table with the same heading name (Sales) and criteria value (>1000) somewhere out of the filtering range. In this example, the criteria range is E1:E2.

 

hide autofilter arrows initial data 1

 

Now you can filter while hiding AutoFilter arrows.

  1. Select the range you want to filter (here, B1:C9) and in the Ribbon, go to Data > Sort & Filter > Advanced.

 

hide autofilter arrows 1

 

  1. In the Advanced Filter window, select the Criteria range (here, E1:E2), and press OK.

 

hide autofilter arrows 2a

 

The result looks just like it did with standard filtering (see Step 4 image in the section above). The only difference is the “hidden” arrows in Row 1.

 

hide autofilter arrows 3

 

Show AutoFilter Arrows in Google Sheets

  1. To add AutoFilter arrows in Google Sheets, first click anywhere in the dataset.
  2. Then click the Create a filter icon in the Toolbar.

 

google sheets show autofilter 1

 

This adds AutoFilter arrows to the header row, so you can filter your data.

 

google sheets show autofilter 2

 

In Google Sheets, you can’t hide AutoFilter arrows while you filter data. The only way to get rid of the arrows is to remove the filter.

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