Excel Tip: Data Group

The purpose data group is to facilitate hiding rows and columns. Data group is an alternative to using the Format -> Hide menu command. The data group feature is useful when a spreadsheet contains columns or rows that you do not wish to print or show, but wish to retain.

Detail

As an alternative to manually hiding rows or columns, use the Data Group feature. It is easier to hide and unhide columns and rows with the Data Group feature, and there is a visual indicator to the user that there are hidden rows or columns.

Exercise

The following exercise will demonstrate how to set up and use Data Group.

The worksheet shown in Figure 106 contains detail for each month. But when we print the report, we want to hide the monthly detail and only show the total for the quarter. To use data group to hide the columns, simply highlight (select) the rows or in this case, columns, you wish to group.

Figure 106

In our case, we want to hide the Jan, Feb and Mar data, so we will select columns B, C and D, as shown in Figure 107.

Figure107

Next, select the Data -> Group and Outline -> Group menu item. Notice that Excel added a hide detail button. By clicking the hide detail button, your spreadsheet will hide the grouped columns as shown in Figure 108.

Figure 108

Clicking the show detail button will unhide the grouped columns. Enjoy using this feature to make your spreadsheets more user friendly!