How to sort and filter lists to find your data

How to organise your lists to find what you need more easily

If you have a long list of customers, you can sort them by things like Customer No. or Country Region Code to make it easier to get a quick overview of the data. You’ll be able to sort different lists of data by any of their column headings.

Select the column you want to sort and select the drop-down arrow in the column heading. Then select Ascending or Descending.

How to reduce the number of results on your lists using the filter

Filtering is especially helpful when you’re viewing and analysing longer documents. Maybe you want to filter the line items in a posted sales invoice to display all those that have a discount above 5%. You might want to see bike accessories with 'pro' in the name. Or maybe you only want to see customers from NSW in your list. You can set a filter using the filter pane to do this.

Select the drop-down arrow next to the name of the page or list, and then select the Show filter pane or Filter action. Or just press Shift+F3.

In the filter pane you can see the current filters for a list and set your own filters – just select the + Filter action. Then you can set and save different views; add filters to certain fields to reduce the number of records in the list; and filter your totals by section.

Organise your information with filter and sorting shortcuts

How to sort long lists of customers

Select Alt+F7 to sort list data in ascending or descending order.

How to use filtering to widen your search

Need to look for orders from a particular customer but not sure how to spell their name? Or perhaps you’re looking for orders made between two dates? You can adjust filtering and widen your search by using these powerful characters:

@man shows text that matches man and isn’t case-sensitive
Hans?n looks for text such as Hansen or Hanson
‘man’ looks for an exact character match
*co* looks for text that contains ‘Co’ and is case-sensitive
<>0 looks for all numbers except 0
1200 | 1300 looks for numbers with 1200 or 1300
22..24 looks for the dates from the 22nd to 24th of the current month;
P8 looks for information for and from accounting period 8

How to filter your data to find what you need

Whether you’re looking for purchase orders for one vendor, looking for customers in just one state, or searching your items list, filtering can help you find what you need, fast. Here are some more keyboard shortcuts to help you use filtering to sort through data quickly:

To filter on a cell value to see a list of all customers in WA for example, select Alt+F3
To open the filter pane to select or set a new filter, select Ctrl+Shift+F3
Set a manual filter to search for a certain company name for example, by selecting F3
Ctrl+Enter will take you out of the filter pane back to your list
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F3 will reset your filters
Ctrl+End will take you to the end of the list
Ctrl+home will take you to the start of the list

How to zoom in on list information

If you're working with large line item lists or want to enter data fast, then it can be easier to focus in on just that part of the list. This might be when you're working on documents that include a line items part, such as a sales order or invoice page. You can use the focus option to expand the line items section to take up most of the workspace on the screen. This gives you a better overview of the lines items and gives you more room to work on them.

Select anywhere in the line item part and press Ctrl+Shift+F12
To switch back to the normal view, press Ctrl+Shift+F12 again