Excel as a Database for Sorting and Filtering
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This lesson teaches students how excel can be used as a database for sorting and filtering data.
This example uses Office 2008 for Mac, but the process is common to Office for Windows as well.
- Students will enter simple planetary data into Excel.
- Students will then sort the data by Planet.
- Students will sort the data by Moons.
- Students will sort the data by Rotation Period by Days.
- Students will sort the data by Rotation Period by Hours.
- Students will filter the data to find planets whose rotation period is shorter than 17.9 hours.
Step One:
Enter the following planetary data into an excel worksheet.
Step Two:
Sort the data by Planet.
Is the data for the remaining columns still correct? When the column for Planet was sorted, what happened to the other columns data?
The data in the remaining columns is still correct. The other columns data was sorted with the Planet column
Step Three
Sort the data by Moons
Which 2 planets have the least moons? Which 2 planets have the most moons? What happened to the data in the Rotation period columns?
Mercury and Venus have the least moons. Uranus and Saturn have the most moons. The rotation period columns were sorted to match the change in Planet column.
Step Four
Students will continue to sort the remaining columns by Rotation Periods.
Which 2 planets have the shortest rotation periods? Longest ?
Jupiter and Saturn have the shortest. Mercury and Venus have the longest.
Step Five
Custom Filtering - Filter Planets to show only those whose rotation period is less than 17.9 hours.
Which planets have shorter rotation periods than 17.9 hours?
Jupiter and Saturn.
