Creating Manual Groups from Sorted Rows

WHAT IF YOU DON’T WANT to create subtotals, but you do want to group your data by sorted sections? For example, what if you want to create groups for each state in your Cities list, but don’t want to apply any kind of calculation to the list—you just want to be able to expand and collapse your view of the list to show only certain states and their cities?

Excel 2010 makes this easy, with the Group button, shown in Figure 7-20. The button is found in the Outline group of the Data tab, and is paired with an Ungroup button, which allows your groups to be—that’s right—ungrouped.

Figure 7-20. Create your own groups from a sorted list—with the Group button.

[View full size image]

To use the Group button, follow these steps:

1.	With your list sorted, to create groups from one or more of the fields, select the rows that make up a group. Figure 7-21 shows the cities in California turned into a group. Figure 7-21. Select the series of rows that make the group you’d like to be able to set apart within the list. [View full size image]
2.	Click the Group button. 1 and 2 buttons appear on the left side of the worksheet, allowing you to collapse this group (use the 1 button) or expand it to show all the cities in that group (click the 2 button).
3.	Continue selecting series of rows, clicking the Group button for each one. Figure 7-22 shows several grouped states. Figure 7-22. Group the states you want to be able to expand or collapse. Those not grouped will always appear in detail, but the ones you group can be collapsed and removed from view in the list. [View full size image]

To get rid of a group, select it (drag through the rows that make up the group) and click the Ungroup button. Pretty simple! If you’ve made several individual groups, you will have to Ungroup them individually.