So many poor reports... Do system developers not know of Autofilter?

Are system developers not aware that Excel has a feature called Autofilter?
Here are two examples of report conversions made on the forum, I'm sure there are many more.

https://www.excelforum.com/excel-gen...ml#post4135524
https://www.excelforum.com/excel-gen...ew-column.html


It is almost like they are not aware of the Autofilter feature in Excel. I can't imagine any of the original reports in the two examples being good for anything.

Edit:
Does anyone have experiences or opinions about converting reports output from large systems in a "reportish" style to Autofilter friendly style?
I like to start a discussion about it.

Are you criticising the posters or those offering help? I wonder why you didn't suggest AutoFilter in either case. I do know of AutoFilter, but I simply don't like it, and prefer to use other methods. You should remember that there is alwasy more than one way to skin a cat, and your preferred method may not suit everyone.

As for poor data layout and reports: you won't get away from this. Many people inherit systems that they are often not allowed to change, despite there being many better options.

If you feel so strongly about it, become an AutoFilter evangelist here and spread the word by offering as many solutions as you can where it would be appropriate with a workbook demonstartion. That's what I used to do with PowerQuery before the more general uptake of MS365.

The posters are the victims.
They are the victims of receiving reports that cannot be autofiltered because of their "reportish" layout. In both links I posted, the posters came to Excelforum to get help in getting their reportish report over to a format where they could use autofilter and in both cases they got the help they needed here and were very happy.

The poster in the first link would recieve a new report every month, then spend 12 hours(!) reformatting it manually so that he could then use Autofilter on it.
He asked his company for a reportformat that would be suitable for a Autofilter but the report was generated by a third party company and it was a firm no. After a bit of trial and error he got a macro that did the job in 2 seconds.

So who am I criticizing? Systemdevelopers that design output reports from large systems and seemingly have little or no knowledge that they can make the output in an autofilter friendly format that will allow the end user to filter and sort and find the information they want.

Originally Posted by AliGW

As for poor data layout and reports: you won't get away from this. Many people inherit systems that they are often not allowed to change, despite there being many better options.

Yeah I guess you're right.

Originally Posted by AliGW

Are you criticising the posters or those offering help?

In the first link, I am the one offering help.

So what's the question? Is it just an exasperated rhetorical venting, or are you actually wanting some interaction here? I'm not clear what the aim of this thread is - sorry.

I wanted to open a discussion, I was hoping people would share their experiences and thoughts on this. This is the watercooler section, right?

Yes, but your opening post was not really clear in terms of your expectations for the thread. It might be worth adding your expectations to the opening post for anyone coming to the thread.

Interesting to hear, thanks for your input Mingeita!