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Message:: [QUOTE="geekpryde, post: 1975615, member: 36248"]Part 6:  Creating and Maintaining a Want-List (Excel) FILTERING Many collectors have a want-list of coins to buy at a later time.   Some keep this want-list in their head or a scrap of paper, or a notebook, on their cell phone as a to-do list, and a few other common methods. Today I want to discuss of how I do it, and how I recommend doing it.   I use a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, and since I also have a Windows Phone, this is synced to my Phone, and multiple PC's, as well as stored in the "cloud". Excel is extremely powerful.  It can be used in a superficial manner, but you can also really geek-out and automate Excel using VBA to make very powerful applications that remain in the Office suite that is ubiquitous in most offices across the globe. We are not going to use these advanced features for our want-list, but I wanted to point out you can modify this basic want-list concept to be a simple or complicated as you want. The reason why the spreadsheet coin want-list is so powerful is that it can be used in a variety of ways to sum, filter, sort, color-code, and update easily.  It can be used in conjunction with an inventory list, or you may want to keep both your owned coins and your wanted coins on one spreadsheet with a "STATUS" column that listed "OWNED", "WANT", "SKIP". "UPGRADE", etc. Using Excels build-in "Filter" toggle, you can easily hide parts of your spreadsheet and manipulate it without having to LOOK at the entire database at once.   For instance, say you wanted to print off your current want-list, and wanted to ignore any Types you already own.  You simply turn on filtering, and specify WANT/NEED, and auto-magically all your other coins are hidden.  You can then sort this list by a column, for example, estimated price in the grade you are looking for so you can focus on the more affordable coins. For this example I am going to use a USA Type List as my want-list, but obviously all these techniques can be used on any list, for instances, a complete list of Seated Dimes with Major and Minor Varieties. Filtering in Excel: [ATTACH=full]351353[/ATTACH] Click the "DATA" tab on the Office Ribbon.   Select the "FILTER" tool.   Click the drop down icon that has appeared on the "STATUS" column. [ATTACH=full]351354[/ATTACH] Now, you can start Typing and Excel will reduce the list of Text that appears in the column, or you can Select or De-Select the term(s) you want to see/ not see. So, lets show only the "NEED" coins.  Click OK. [ATTACH=full]351355[/ATTACH] And my list of 200+ rows is instantly reduced to just the coins with a status of NEED. [ATTACH=full]351356[/ATTACH] I can specify as many columns to FILTER as I want, and change them easily on the fly. Lets say I only want to see DIMES that I NEED: [ATTACH=full]351357[/ATTACH] Now, with filtering turned on, you can still SORT the spreadsheet like you normally would.  Nothing will be corrupted, or lost, or "messed-up" in the hidden rows.  Let's sort our filtered NEED Dimes by desired grade: [ATTACH=full]351358[/ATTACH] We click OK, and this is what we now have with only a few clicks to filter and sort: [ATTACH=full]351359[/ATTACH] Now, lets say you just took the 30 seconds it takes to make the want list, but remember you needed to update a coin you already own.   You have printed off the want-list as seen above, and want to basically "undo" the filtering.   It takes a single click of the same "FILTER" button we used to start the process: [ATTACH=full]351360[/ATTACH] and voila! [ATTACH=full]351361[/ATTACH] [/QUOTE]

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