Quickly Filtering Data in Any Microsoft Access Datasheet View

Provided by the FMS Development Team

Whenever viewing data in any Microsoft Access 2003 or earlier datasheet (i.e. Table, Query, Datasheet Form or Subform), you can quickly filter the data that is displayed by applying a quick filter. You can apply more than one filter, and you can continue adding filters until you reach one or no more records.

One way to do this is to Right-click in any column (not on the column header) to perform a quick filter. When you right-click, a menu is displayed with the following options:

1. Filter By Selection
2. Filter Excluding Selection
3. Filter For [textbox to enter criteria]

The first two are very useful and self-explanatory, but the third is somewhat scary, as it allows input from the user. It has a textbox in the menu that accepts entry of any valid criteria, just as you would if you were creating a query. For starters, try entering an exact value from your data. (e.g. ALFKI, 12209, or Germany). To take this a step further, you can also use the 'OR' operator. (Germany OR Mexico). Finally, to really give you flexibility, you can use the pattern matching(*[mdb] or %[ADP]) operators and/or the comparison
(<,>,<>, Between...And) operators.