Cannot Sort or Filter

Thanks for the feedback.

The fact that merging cells disable Sort or Filter was reporter several times here.
This is why I asked you about the use of this feature.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 29 janvier 2010 21:01:00

How are we to find the merged cells? My document is 4000 rows long, and adding a merged cell has disabled the sort for the entire document.

I would gladly remove the offending row, but how can I find it?

(Ongoing frustration with Numbers has made dislike the fact that this is not considered beta software.)

akapa wrote:
I would gladly remove the offending row, but how can I find it?

Make a copy of the document so you don't mess up the content during the search. Apply thick, dark Cell Borders to the entire table so the Splits and Combinations will stand out as you scan the table.

(Ongoing frustration with Numbers has made dislike the fact that this is not considered beta software.)

This is not a bug, it is a design feature. You may not like it, but that's the way it is. One can't properly sort a table that has combined or split Rows, so the function is disabled.

Jerry

Thanks for the idea of darkening.

I still ended up having to spend about 30 minutes finding the one row I had split entries on, because Numbers pinwheels when scrolling large documents. The way I ended up having to do it involved successively deleting half the document to try and get some idea of where the row was.

With scroll not really working on large documents, most anything that involves moving through the whole spreadsheet brings thing to a crawl.

It seems that giving a warning that applying a change will disable sorting would be a good idea. Especially since many people have ended up having to come to these forums to figure out why Numbers stopped doing a basic function.

I'm having a similar problem in that Numbers will sort, and will categorise, a table but won't filter it. I used the "Checking Register" template to start off, and entered my data manually. The template has a merged cell in the top header row, and having read this thread I deleted the row. No change. I then copied the data manually to another table, but still couldn't filter it (by date, as it happens - but none of the fields work). There are no other split or merged cells that I can see either in the original table based on the template or the new one made from scratch with the copied data.

This is a fairly major problem, in my view, given that Numbers is supposed to be about making data manipulation easier. As it is, copying the data into Excel and filtering there is the only solution, but that's not what I want to do and it's very cumbersome.

Andrew,

We're just users like you. We'll do our best to help you with tips and guidance based on our experience, but we have little to no influence on how the program may be changed in future releases.

The first tip I would offer is never merge or split. Numbers offers you many ways to highlight and add notation without having to merge or split cells. So why do we have these options? There are cases where merging and splitting can be harmless: when we know we will never want/need to sort, or categorize, or use equations that reference whole columns/rows of data.

Second tip. Learn how to build separate tables to summarize the data under your own control. This is fun and effective and if you don't like the result you have no one to blame but yourself.

All that said, the Check Register template does have a merged cell in the first row and it does operate properly when categorizing the sample data the it comes pre-populated with, even the Date column works just fine here. This proves that while merging and splitting can be the cause of table troubles, it doesn't necessarily cause table corruption. It just improves, or worsens, the odds.

I'd suggest that you open a fresh template and see if you can do what you want with the sample data. If not, you have a system problem or a problem of understanding the Categories feature. This group can help you work through that. It would be best though if you would open a new topic to discuss it.

Jerry

Jerry,

Thanks for your comments.

First, I didn't merge or split. The Checking Register template comes with a split cell. I tried to filter both with it and after deleting it.

Second, I often do build separate tables for analysis. I've been using spreadsheets for over twenty five years, almost as long as they've been around in fact. I began building macro-driven databases in Lotus and then continued in Excel, including one financial database which was used commercially. In this case I was trying to put myself in the place of some of my staff who are not particularly computer literate and the job was a small one, hence my use of a template.

Third, I wasn't categorising - I was filtering. I agree the standard template can be categorised - but I wasn't doing that.

I find that if you open the Check Register template, select the Transactions table, and then try to filter it using the Reorganize dialogue box/"show only rows containing..." and try using the date column, it won't accept a date input as anything other than an exact match. In other words, Numbers seems to be using the date merely as a text string.

Do you get the same result or am I doing something wrong?

Andrew ***** wrote:
First, I didn't merge or split. The Checking Register template comes with a split cell. I tried to filter both with it and after deleting it.

The result is the sqame.
You are using a table with splitted cell.

Second, I often do build separate tables for analysis. I've been using spreadsheets for over twenty five years, almost as long as they've been around in fact.

I made potteries during 33 years and it doesn't help to use Numbers.
The fact that you use one or several other spreadsheets during years is of absolutely no value when you enter a new tool which isn't designed on the same basis.

It seems that you are in 'Think different land'.

Deleting a row containing split or merged cells doesn't reset a standard behaviour.
This is why several helpers urged users to take care to this feature which introduce unwanted collateral effects (not so serious that some collateral effects in middle Eastern).

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 14 avril 2010 16:48:50

Andrew ***** wrote:
The Checking Register template comes with a split cell.

Yes, I acknowledged that.

Third, I wasn't categorising - I was filtering.

Sorry, I didn't read carefully enough

I find that if you open the Check Register template, select the Transactions table, and then try to filter it using the Reorganize dialogue box/"show only rows containing..." and try using the date column, it won't accept a date input as anything other than an exact match. In other words, Numbers seems to be using the date merely as a text string.
Do you get the same result or am I doing something wrong?

What I find is that only the last criteria works with Dates, the one titled: "Date is". Only the last 4 criteria types for Date Is work for absolute dates and date ranges. The preceding ones are all relative to today's date.

I've never used this feature, but a little experimentation reveals how it works.

Jerry

I guess that you used the merge cells feature at least once in the table.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 29 janvier 2010 19:14:01

Yes it does.
It's why I guessed that you applied this feature ;-*)

It' wa reported several times in this forum.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 18 février 2010 12:02:47