Slicers in Excel

I am going to start writing about slicers assuming that you don’t know about them at all and
then graduate you to more complex nitty gritties of slicers.

Slicers happen to be one of the most interactive and simple to use features in excel. Let’s
begin with the basic question..

What are Slicers?

Think of slicers as interactive buttons to lter your pivot tables. Let’s take a look at this pivot
table

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 We have sales displayed by Regions and Customers

But what if you wanted to see Sales for only West? Obviously you’ll apply a lter or put
regions in Report Filter. But hey!.. here is what you can do it with slicers

1. Did you notice the interactivity ? – you can change the regions with buttons
2. The back end pivot table (on which the chart has been made) is also changing
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 How to insert a Slicer?
Assuming that I have caught your attention, let me now tell you how can you insert a slicer in
your pivot table

1. Click on any cell in the pivot table

2. Go to the Insert menu and
3. Click on Slicer
4. In the Insert Slicer Box, choose eld/s on which you want the slicer. In our case it will be ‘Region’
5. Done! Instantly you’ll get an interactive button displaying all four regions. Clicking any region will
lter the pivot table
 

Slicers auto update when the data changes..

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 1. Now assume for some reason that if the data changes – 2 records (regions) edited as South West
and North East
2. Now go to the pivot table and press CTRL+ALT+F5 (shortcut to refresh the pivot) and you’ll see
that the new regions are now updated in the region slicer
 

Slicers can also be added to Tables..

As of now we are creating a pivot table from our data and then applying slicers to it!
Alternatively you can also apply slicers directly to your data (after converting it into a
table). This is speci cally an Excel 2013 (and above) feature and it is pretty awesome. Take a
look..

Step 1) Assume that we have this data

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 Step 2) Convert the data into a Table

1. Select any cell from your data and use the shortcut CTRL+T to convert it into a table. Note that
the data must have headers (column names)
2. Now that we have the table structure, in the Insert Tab click on Slicers
3. As soon as you click on slicer buttons the table will get ltered! Pretty cool eh?? 😀
 

Connecting Slicers to Multiple Pivot Tables!

A single slicer can be connected to multiple pivot tables. That means a click on one slicer will
change multiple pivot tables. Take a look at how that happens

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 1. Note in the above image I have 2 pivots and their respective charts
2. But at the rst time, the slicer (on regions) is changing just one pivot table (& Chart)
3. To connect the slicer to both the pivot tables. Right Click and go to report connections
4. Check on the pivot tables that you want to link to and click on OK. Now the slicer will refresh both
pivots and charts
 

A few important things to note

1. You can connect the slicer to multiple pivot tables which are made from the same source data
2. A Slicer won’t be connected to a pivot table which comes from a di erent source data
3. By default the slicer is only connected to one pivot table (on which you create the slicer)
 

Where can you use slicers..

1. Slicers are pretty powerful to create interactivity in Excel and provide stunning visualization as
well.
2
2. If you work with Report Filters, you can replace them all with Slicers.
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 3. Plus slicers can also connect/disconnect to multiple pivot tables unlike Report Filters
 

DOWNLOAD THE WORKBOOK WITH ALL EXAMPLES USED (https://www.goodly.co.in/wp-

content/uploads/2016/08/Slicers-in-Excel.xlsx)

Slicer Compatibility Issues!

1. Slicers were a new feature added in Excel 2010 on-wards.
2. If you create a slicer in excel 2010 and open that in workbook in excel 2007, slicers won’t be
visible 🙁
3. In Excel 2013 (and on-wards) 2 additional features were added
1. Timelines – we’ll talk about this in the coming posts
2. Slicers in Tables – As discussed above
 

How often do you use slicers?

Are you an avid slicer or is it the rst time you are learning about slicers?

1. If you are newbie slicer – How would you use them in your work or post questions if you have any
?
2. If are avid slicer – Share your tips and tricks in the comments ?
I am personally a very avid user of slicers especially in my dashboards and dynamic reports

Coming Up Next …
Making your slicers look classy is one hell of a job, so I am going to discuss with you some
awesome tips for formatting slicers + some bonus tips for handing multiple slicers in a
single dashboard

Other Interesting Tutorials

1. Pivot Table Tricks and Hacks (https://www.goodly.co.in/16-life-and-time-saving-pivot-table-
tricks/)
2. Use Drop Downs to make Interactive Charts (https://www.goodly.co.in/use-data-
2 validation-drop-down-as-on-o -switches/)
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 3. Evergreen Productivity Hacks for a Daily Excel User (https://www.goodly.co.in/30-
evergreen-productivity-hacks-in-excel/)
4. Advanced use of slicer – Visualization Contest Entry (https://www.goodly.co.in/cost-
structure-visualization-chandoos-visualization-contest/)
5. Advanced use of timeline – 30 Day Challenge Dashboard (https://www.goodly.co.in/30-day-
challenge-dashboard/)
 

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Excel and PowerPoint Presentations

Send me the e-books! ()

Slicer Formatting Tricks A Quick Work Place Tour – Just for fun!
(https://www.goodly.co.in/slicer-formatting-tricks/) (https://www.goodly.co.in/a-quick-work-place-tour/)

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a.rakesh patro
− ⚑
2 years ago
Hey chandeep, in first picture above the slicer some scrollbar you have added which changes
colour with respective of slicer. what is that? can you please explain.
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 Chandeep > a.rakesh patro
− ⚑
2 years ago

Rakesh, I am using a macro to manage multiple slicers in a Dashboard. Refer to this link -
http://www.goodly.co.in/man...
△ ▽ Reply

Pavan Kumar
− ⚑
2 years ago

This is the coolest thing I learnt in a while!

△ ▽ Reply

Chandeep > Pavan Kumar

− ⚑
2 years ago
Glad you liked it dude!
△ ▽ Reply

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