Filter by color in Google Sheets: Learn how

Google Sheets is one of the most intuitive and collaborative spreadsheet applications out there. Late March, its functionalities expanded even more by releasing a new feature: sort and filter cells by text or fill color.  Unfortunately, Google Sheets’ connectivity and filter options do come with some limitations. For example, there is no built-in functionality with which you can filter by color between Google Sheets. For that reason, Sheetgo created the feature and therefore enables the possibility to filter data, solely based on the cell color, from one spreadsheet to the other. Learn how to filter by color by following the simple steps below.

Let’s get you started

Step 1. Install Sheetgo

Click on the button below to install the Sheetgo add-on for Google Sheets. First, sign in with your Google account. Second, complete the authorization steps, for Sheetgo to create your account simultaneously.

For the purpose of demonstration, let’s say we have a spreadsheet called “Database”. It includes all relevant information about a list of employess and their annual salary. But we need to export data from only the Spanish emplyees (in yellow) to the “New database” spreadsheet.

Step 2. Open the add-on

Inside your destination spreadsheet “New database”, go to Menu > Add-ons > Sheetgo > Start. After that, Sheetgo opens as a sidebar on your screen. Click on ‘Import data from file’ to select your data source. In other words, select from which file you need to import the filtered data (in this case: “Database”).

Example

Select Sheet file(s) to import data from a spreadsheet.

Select the file and the tab you want to import data from.

Step 3. Filter by color

Now select your data processor. Choose filter in order to filter data by color.

Choose Cell color to select data by color.

Choose which column you would like to filter (in this case: column C “Nationality”). After that, choose which color you want to filter out (in this case: yellow).

Step 4. Save the connection

Finally, click on ‘Save connection’ to import only that specific data. As a result, Sheetgo creates a new tab in your destination spreadsheet. Here you can now see the information about all the Spanish employees, as we requested. Sheetgo has filtered out the “Nationality” column to only export the cells in yellow, as seen on the image below.

Example

This is how you easily Filter by color in Google Sheets with Sheetgo! Check out the following blog post if you are curious about our other features that help boost your spreadsheet connectivity: how to track changes in Google Sheets.