Filters

A filter hides the rows you do not want to see right now, so you can pull 12 products out of 40,000 without changing a thing.

A filter narrows a table down to the rows you want to look at. You pick a column, pick a condition, and give it a value, and the table keeps only the rows that answer. It reads every row you have and not only the page you can see. So 12 matches out of 40,000 products come back together on one page, however far in they were.

Nothing is changed and nothing is deleted, so a filter is safe to play with. It decides what you see, and you take it off again whenever you want.

Most people filter to find a gap or to gather a group. Products with no cost on them, brands no one has used yet, imports that failed last week. Once the table shows only those rows you can work through them, change them all in one pass, or send the list to a teammate as a link.

Every list in the PIM is the same table, so what you learn on one works on the rest. That covers the four catalog lists, the three specification lists and your asset library. It also covers the imports, exports and data sources lists under Uploads, and the tables inside every report. The controls are in a toolbar directly above the rows, and the one that opens the filters is called Filter.

Before you start

A filter changes no data on its own. What matters first is what happens to the rows it leaves you with.

How to filter a table

1. 1

   Open the table you want to narrow

   From Catalog, select Products, or open any other list. Directly above the rows is a toolbar with Search, Columns, Filter and Density on it.

2. 2

   Open the filter panel

   Click Filter in that toolbar. A panel opens under it with one empty filter row waiting in it.

3. 3

   Choose the column to narrow on

   Set Filter by, the first dropdown in the row, to a column such as Status.

4. 4

   Choose a condition

   Set Operator, the dropdown beside it, to a condition such as is. Which conditions you get depends on the column you just picked.

5. 5

   Give the condition a value

   Type or pick your answer in Value, the last box in the row. The table narrows as soon as you do, and clicking anywhere outside the panel closes it again.

That is the whole flow. Your table now shows only the rows that answered. Your filter is in the address bar too, so what you are looking at is already a link you can bookmark or send.

Everything below explains the toolbar one control at a time, then what goes into the link when you share the result. You do not need any of it to narrow a table.

Every option in detail

The toolbar is the same above every table, so the sections below follow it from left to right, and then move on to the columns and the pages under it.

The toolbar above every table

The toolbar is a single row between the page and the first row of data. It has four controls, plus whatever buttons that table adds of its own, such as New Product on the products table.

Search and Filter both narrow the table, and they are worth telling apart. Use Search when you roughly know the words you are after and want the answer in one keystroke. Use Filter when the question is exact, and always when you are looking for an absence. No amount of typing into Search can ask for a product with no cost on it.

The search box

Search looks like a plain word in the toolbar until you click it, and then it turns into a box you type into. The table narrows a moment after you stop typing, and not on every letter. A Clear button appears beside the box once there is something in it, and pressing Esc empties the box and turns it back into the word.

What the box matches is decided by the table you are on. On Products it reads the product title and your identifier values, so a SKU or a barcode finds its product. On the smaller tables it reads across the columns you can see.

Whatever you type is matched as one phrase and not as separate words. So open box finds the rows with those two words together, and not every row with open somewhere in it.

There is no minimum length here. A single letter searches, which is a difference from the search over the whole product, where nothing runs below two characters.

Building a condition in the filter panel

Click Filter in the toolbar and a panel opens under the button, with one filter row in it. A filter row is three dropdowns side by side and a small × for throwing the row away.

Two buttons are at the bottom of the panel. Add filter gives you another row, and Remove all clears every row in one click. There is no button that applies your work, because the table narrows while you build.

There is a second way into the same panel. Hover over a column header, click the menu at its right edge, and pick Filter. The panel opens with Filter by already set to that column, which saves you finding it in a long list.

You can put more than one condition on the same column. Two contains rows on Title are allowed, and a greater than (>) row plus a less than (<) row on Cost is how you ask for a range instead of a single limit.

Combining two conditions

Add a second row to the filter panel and a small dropdown appears at its top left, reading And. It is the choice between narrowing and widening, and it applies to every row on the panel and not to one pair of them.

And is what you want most of the time, because every condition you add takes the list further down. Switch to Or when you are gathering instead of narrowing: draft products together with archived products, in one list, rather than the products that are somehow both at once.

The dropdown is not on the first row, since a single condition has nothing to combine with.

Conditions on different columns combine the same way conditions on one column do, and they can be of different kinds. So four rows on And give you every active product, in one category, with no cost on it, changed since a date you picked.

The conditions you get on each kind of column

Operator, the middle dropdown on a filter row, does not give you the same list on every column. A date and a price cannot be asked the same questions, so the list is built from the kind of thing the column has in it.

A count is never missing, because a brand with no products still has a count and that count is 0. So a count column drops the empty conditions, and you ask for equals (=) with a value of 0 instead.

is empty and is not empty are the two worth learning first, since they are the only way to ask for something that is not there. Variants with no cost, products in no category, brands no one has used. Each of those is one row on the panel, and without it you would build the same list by reading the whole table to the end.

What you type into Value

Value, the last box on a filter row, is not always a box you type into. It changes with the column, so you are never typing a date yourself or guessing how a brand is spelled.

A measurement is the one that catches people out. Your weights and sizes are shown in whichever unit your organization works in, so the filter puts that unit next to the box. Type 11, leave the unit on lb, and you get the rows over 11 pounds. Change the unit after that and the number is converted for you, so the filter keeps asking for the same physical size. Come back to a saved filter later and it opens in your organization’s unit, whatever unit you first typed in.

A dropdown never gives you the same value twice on one column. Pick Active on one row, then add a second is row on Status. Active has dropped out of its list, so you cannot build two rows that ask the same thing.

Sorting your rows

A filter decides which rows you get and a sort decides the order they come in. Click a column header once to sort it going up, and again to turn it around. Clicking never gets you back to no order at all, so for that, open the menu at the right edge of the column header and pick Unsort.

Keep Shift held while you click a second column header and both sorts apply, with the one you set first breaking the ties.

Choosing which columns you see

Columns in the toolbar opens the list of every column you are allowed to turn off, each with a checkbox beside it. A search box is at the top for the long lists. Two controls are at the bottom: Show/Hide All flips every checkbox at once, and Reset puts the table back the way it arrived.

A column that is not in this list cannot be turned off. Title on Products is one of those, and the fields that only ever exist as filters are missing from it too.

Hiding a column does not take it out of Filter by. You can narrow on a column you cannot see, and that is what makes those filter-only fields usable at all.

Moving, resizing and pinning a column

Drag a column header sideways to move it. Drag the line between two headers to make one wider or narrower, up to 400 pixels, and double-click that same line to fit the column to whatever is in it.

Pinning keeps a column still while the rest scroll under it, which is how you keep a name in view while reading columns off the far right. Open the menu at the right edge of the column header and pick Pin to left or Pin to right. You get 3 per side, and a fourth is rejected with You can pin up to 3 columns per side.

Setting the row height and the page size

Density in the toolbar gives you three heights: Compact, Standard and Comfortable. Pick Compact when you want as many rows on screen as you can get, and Comfortable when you are reading them one at a time instead of scanning.

At the bottom right of the table you choose how many rows a page shows: 25, 50 or 100. The catalog and upload tables open at 50 and a report table opens at 25.

Changing a condition or a sort puts you back on page 1, because the page you were on may have nothing on it under the new filter.

Filtering on a phone

On a narrow screen the toolbar keeps Search, Columns and Filter and drops Density. The panels stop floating beside their button and slide up from the bottom of the screen instead, over the table, and you tap outside them to close them. You get one page size instead of three, and it is 25.

Limits

What filters cannot do

What goes into the link when you share a table

Everything you set on a table goes into the address, which makes the table you are looking at a link. Copy it out of the address bar, send it, and whoever opens it gets your conditions, your sort, your search and your page.

Not all of it goes in, though, and the split is worth reading before you send one.

What goes into the link

The left column is about which rows you are looking at and the right column is about how they are laid out. So a teammate opening your link reads exactly your rows, laid out in their own columns and not in yours.

Everything on the right is kept per browser and per table. That is why the same table can look one way on your laptop and another way on your phone, with nothing wrong in either.

Sending someone a selection

The rows you check with the checkbox at the left of each row go into the link too, up to 200 of them. Past 200 the checked rows stay on your screen and never get into the address, and nothing says so. You keep your selection, and the person you sent the link to opens the same table with nothing checked.

The checkbox in the header row above them is different. That one selects every row your filter matches, however many there are. It does go in, because what the link stores is the filter and not the list of rows.

Keeping a filter you build often

A link is right for sending something once. For the filter you rebuild every Monday, saved views is the control that keeps it. It stores the whole address under a name you choose, and it is in the header bar above the table.

A filter is also what a bulk change runs on, so bulk actions and the filter panel are usually used one after the other.

When something goes wrong

Your table came back empty

A condition you forgot you set

The Filter button in the toolbar shows a small number beside it for how many conditions are on. A table that looks wrong to you is usually a table with a condition you left behind. Click Filter and read the rows, then use Remove all at the bottom of the panel to clear them all at once.

That number only counts a row that is finished. A row where you picked a column and stopped is not in the count, even though it is still on the panel.

A row you only half filled in

A filter row whose condition needs a value and does not have one narrows nothing, and the table does not tell you. It also does not disappear. Click Filter in the toolbar, look for a filter row whose Value is empty, and either finish it or remove it with the × on that row.

A column you cannot filter or sort

Some columns are there only to be read: a picture, or a summary built out of other columns. They have no menu on their header and they are missing from the Filter by dropdown inside the filter panel. Narrow on a column beside them instead, such as the name that goes with the picture.

Where to go next