Basic Filtering Question: I hope

Hello, I'm new to the forum and new to Excel, and I'm stumped.

I'm working with a very large data set with multiple rows and columns. One column is Cities. I'd like to use this column to filter the data, and I'd like to hide all data from cities that start with a vowel. I've been able to hide all cities that start with an "A" for example, but I can't figure out how to hide all data that have city names that start with a e i o or u at the same time.

Any help at all is very much appreciated. Thanks so much in advance.

Muttski

Hello welcome to the forum.

One way would be to place a Conditional Formatting formula into the Cities column and if it's available in your version of Excel sort by colour. For example:

Formula:

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This entered in column A and formatted to white would allow the filter to return all white cells. Alternatively, you could perhaps use an helper column with the same formula and sort by True.

Hope this helps.
DBY

I can think of one way to do this, by using a "helper" column - the formula in that column could show just the first letter of the city, ie:
LEFT(A2,1)
Then use a DATA FILTER to choose which letters you want or don't want.

Hope this helps!

Mr Shorty's suggestion of an Advanced Filter is a good one if you don't wish to use helper columns or conditional formatting. If for example you place my formula in cell G2 and select G1:G2 as your criteria (leaving G1 blank), then column A would return all Cities not beginning with a vowel. It could also be easily made into a macro.

DBY