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Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

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    Unhappy Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

    So, I'm writing a spread sheet that will help me look up part numbers for coaxial cable connectors. I want to open the spreadsheet, filter by the Cable type that the connector is manufactured for, then filter impedance, ***, connector type, etc... The problem arises because most connectors can be used on MULTIPLE coaxial cable types. So I've created a drop down list for the example connector @ cell B5. When I try to filter column 'B' with the filter widget @ B4 It doesn't list the other coaxial types contained in the dropdown list in cell B5 . Is there any way to get excel to do this?

    I'm using excel 2010, and here is the spreadsheet as an example.. Coaxial Connectors.xlsx

    Thank you all for your help!

    Caleb

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    Re: Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

    The autofilter dropdown list will only contain data that actually exists in that column - after all, there's not much point filtering for non-existent data.
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    Re: Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

    It does exist.....kinda.
    Any way I might achieve this functionality?

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    Re: Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

    Would a vlookup or hlookup do the trick?

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    Re: Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

    Nope. Why would you want to filter for data that definitely won't exist?

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    Re: Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

    Thank you for your input, evidently I have a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly a drop down list is. If you have any methods for me to do this correctly, I'd certainly love to hear it.

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    Re: Excel Wont "FULLY" Filter a column which contains drop down lists! Help Please

    A data validation dropdown list is there to allow you to quickly select a valid item from a list for a particular row. The data in the list is not actual data, merely the available options.

    The autofilter dropdowns only show the actual data items for the rows of data.

    I'm not 100% certain what it is you are trying to do, but perhaps what you want is dependent data validation lists - i.e. you choose an item in column B and that then affects what is available in the data validation lists in subsequent columns? If so, read Debra's excellent pages here: http://www.contextures.com/xlDataVal02.html

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