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In OpenOffice Calc, the only feature I miss from Excel is the ability to create those dropdown dialogs to sort data:

enter image description here

Does OpenOffice Calc have the same feature and I just missed it?

Note: I know the Data>Sort dialog, but I am looking for something that does not require to select the area every time.

2 Answers 2

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If I understand correctly, you want to:

  • Select one or more contiguous columns
  • Go to menu Data::Filter::AutoFilter (or whatever i18n'd menu name you see in your version - position in the menu tree should be the same). Click it.

AutoFilter menu

  • See the new dropdown handle appear on all column headers
  • Click on handle to apply the kind of filter or sort rule that you want.

enter image description here

Valid for OOo 3.3 and LibreOffice 4.2 and 4.4 (where the screenshots come from).

EDIT: Just came back to this and saw @sp00n's question. I am not using OOo, but LibreOffice 6.2.8.2 (on Linux) has exactly the same options. So nothing seems to have been removed in this area.

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    Hm, I'm not seeing these options in OpenOffice 4.1.1, just the default ones "All, Top 10, Standard Filter, etc". Was this feature removed again?
    – sp00n
    Oct 4, 2015 at 12:48
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    Well, that was 4 years ago, I have switched to LibreOffice for several years now and actually have no idea why I even searched for this topic back in the day.
    – sp00n
    Dec 11, 2019 at 0:08
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AFAIK openoffice doesn't have a sort option built into the AutoFilter Dropdown box, as Excel has. But sorting doesn't require to manually select the data area (only if there are empty rows/columns in the data area), so just use the sort buttons from the command bar to sort the data.

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  • Thanks! The sort buttons from the command bar just sort according to the first column, as far as I know. Jun 13, 2011 at 9:27
  • hmm - it depends on which cell is selected. If you select, for example, C2, the data should get sorted according to the third column. Even header cells seem to be recognized (this is why i proposed C 2 :-) )
    – tohuwawohu
    Jun 13, 2011 at 9:38
  • Indeed! That's perfect. Jun 13, 2011 at 10:11

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