How to filter a spreadsheet on multiple filter values

Question

I've got a spreadsheet of addresses with the following columns: First Name, Last Name, Street Address, City, State, and zip code. I'd like to be able to filter or otherwise extract a subset of these address records based on a set of geographically close postal codes. We've been using http://www.freemaptools.com/find-zip-codes-inside-radius.htm to get a list of codes that are within a certain radius of the targe area. W

What's the easiest way to take the comma separated list of zipcodes from freemapstools.com to get a subset of addresses from the full mailing list spreadsheet?

For example: from our complete list of addresses, I want to see all addresses that have a zipcode in the set of: "55055,55119,55125,55129"

For what it's worth, we're using Google Docs, but if this would be easier in Excel that would be fine too.

Answer 1

In your google doc spreadsheet, go to Data->Filter. Click on the boxed down arrow that appears in the header of the zip column. Click on "clear", then type in your desired zipcodes and click on them when they come up (they should be checked).

Answer 2

In Excel 2007 and 2010 the filter options use checkboxes on all applicable values to allow custom selection of any given combination for any given filtered column.

Instead of being presented with a list of the possible values and then whichever you select you get those filtered, such as in Office version 2003 and before, you get a series of checkboxes in 2007 and later. This is less efficient for those times that you only want one particular value, but it's much more powerful in the custom selection capability.