Pivot tables generate great reports in Microsoft Excel, but adding a filter or two can make them even more flexible. Here's how.

You can filter data in Excel based on either certain parameters in columns or over the whole sheet, and you can later unfilter the sheet.

To extract and sort non-adjacent arrays in your data, nest the CHOOSECOLS or CHOOSEROWS functions inside your SORT or SORTBY ...

Q. How do I use the FILTER function in Excel, and how is this an improvement over the filter feature? A. The FILTER function was introduced five years ago as part of the Excel Dynamic Arrays rollout.

If the Excel Date Filter is not grouping by month, enable grouping dates in the AutoFilter menu, set dates in the proper format, etc.

There are lots of ways to return the top or bottom n records from a data set in Microsoft Excel, but the new dynamic array functions make doing so easier than ever.