I wrote a blog post on the New Excel Data Types in May and stated that “the Sky is the limit” in the way the New Excel Data Types can affect the way we work with Excel… And one month later, here is a first Excel feature that is greatly enhanced by The New Excel Data Types. It’s the good old Auto Filter. If you don’t know what the new data types are please read the post I wrote back in May to get the basic understanding of what they are and how they work. This post will only focus on the way they enhance the Auto Filter. And you should keep in mind. Right now (June 2018) the New Data Types are only available in Office 365 Insiders Fast build.

The Example

Let’s start with a simple Excel table containing City names.

And if we open the Auto Filter drop-down at the top we get

Nothing special up to now I hear you say…

Oh but wait…

The New Excel Data Types Enhancing the Auto Filter Experience

Since these cells are the Geographical Data Type, the City Name is an entity and that cell contains much more data than just the Name of the City

And if you look at the Auto Filter Drop-down again, you will see that there is a new field on the top. It says (Display Value) and allows you to choose any field contained within the City entity. In our case, we’re going to choose Country/Region.

And now look at that. Even though the column only contains the City Names you can now filter the City column by Country… Keep in mind that the name of the Country is not the content of the cell.

And if we now choose the United Kingdom from the List of Countries and click Ok

and we get

Only the Cities from the UK…

You can look at the new way that Auto FIlter will work in a brilliant “Hollywood” production that I and Oz Du Soleil from Excel On Fire YouTube Channel put together in Amsterdam. I can assure you, you will see stars.