How to Filter by Color in Excel

Last Updated: May 10, 2023
puneet-gogia-excel-champs

- Written by Puneet

In Excel, when you apply a filter to a column, you have the option to filter values based on the font color and cell background color. This option is already available in the filter, you don’t have to activate anything for this once you apply a filter.

filter-by-color

Steps to Filter a Column by Color in Excel

  1. First, apply the filter to the column.
  2. After that, click on the filter drop-down.
  3. Next, go to the “Filter by Color” option.
  4. In the end, choose the color which you want to choose to apply the filter.

As I said, you have two ways to use color to filter values:

  • By Cell Color
  • By Font Color

In the following example, we have used the red font color to apply the filter. And it has filter values that have red as a font color.

used-red-font-for-filter

In the same way, you can filter based on cell color. And in the below example, we have used the yellow cell color to filter values.

filter-based-on-cell-color

When you open the “Filter by Color”, you have the option to filter cells where you don’t have any cell color or font color.

filter-the-cells-with-no-color

Filter by Color from Right Click Menu

Let’s say you want to filter all the cells based on the cell color of the selected cell.

filter-by-right-click-menu
  1. Select the cell.
  2. Right-click on it.
  3. Go to the Filter Option.
  4. Click on “Filter by Selected Cell’s Color”.
filter-by-selected-color

In the same way, you can filter the cells based on the font color of the cell.

filter-based-on-font-color

Use the “Filter by Selected Cell’s Font Color”.

filter-by-selected-font-color

Notes

  • You can’t apply a filter based on cell color and font color at the same time on a single color. One type of filter can be used at a time.
  • You can apply a filter on multiple columns based on font and cell color. For example, you can filter one column based on the red font color and filter the second column based on the yellow cell color.