Okay, so in this video, we're gonna have a look at filters and slicers. They're similar to each other, but they are subtly different. So we'll have a look at both, and then perhaps talk about the differences. Okay, so let's take filters first. We've got our pivot tables here, two pivot tables. One that shows the salesperson, the products, and the total sales amount. The other one shows salespeople and products and the number of transactions they've dealt with. And we are gonna add a filter to the top one. And the one we're gonna add is for location. So at the minute, this data is for all locations. So if we look at our top pivot table there, our total sales amounts, that's for all of the different locations that we have. And what we'd like to be able to do is have some kind of filtering or pick list or something which allows us to say, well, actually, I'm only interested in the Midwest or a different region. So to do that, you get your cursor somewhere in the pivot table that we want to go and edit. And then we're gonna go and drag location into the filter area. Now, once we've done that, you can see a new element of our pivot table appear above the pivot. It has a dropdown list. And then at the minute we've got all selected. But if I want to go and see just the Midwest data, then I can just select that item, click OK. And now this pivot reflects the fact that this location data is just the Midwest, okay? So filters only affect individual pivot tables. You'll notice the other pivot table, which is on the same page, doesn't look at this filter. It just only affects this one pivot table that we added it to. I could, of course, go down to this pivot table here and do exactly the same thing. So I can go and add location, but notice that the two locations are not related. So if I change one down here, the one at the top here doesn't change or edit either. So it doesn't reflect the change here.

So filters are brilliant. They allow us to filter the data on a particular field, another field in our database, but do remember that they are pivot table specific and they are not related to any other pivot data that you've got in the same sheet. Let's remove those. I'm gonna remove location from both of those pivots.

And then once we've removed them both, let's have a look at how slices are different.

Let's go and add in a slicer. So on the analyze ribbon, you'll find insert slicer. And we need to go and choose the field or fields that we'd like our slicer to work on. So I'm gonna pick the same one we did for our filters. I'm gonna go and choose location and click OK. And what you'll find now is that we have a floating location filtering window.

You notice you can move this around. As I go and click on, so let's say the Midwest, our pivot table now updates to reflect the area I go and choose on. So rather than being a dropdown list, this is quite nice because it's a very nice, easy visual way to go and edit the data. If I want to go back to all of the data then the little cancel button, clear filter at the top here allows me to go and remove it. So slightly different, but you can see it does a similar job to filters. But one thing that's useful about the slicer is that if I right click on the slicer and do report connections, then I'm able to connect this same slicer to a number of different pivot tables. So you can see here we've got two pivot tables in our sheet, and I'd like this slicer to be connected to both of them. So I've ticked them both. I click OK. And now you'll notice that when I go and choose the Midwest in my slicer, it adjusts both of the tables to reflect my choice in my slicer. So that's an advantage that a slicer has over a filter, but both of them do a similar job.