Excel Advanced Filter: How to Use "Does Not Contain"

You can use the following syntax to filter for rows that do not contain specific text in an Excel Advanced Filter:

<>*sometext*

The following examples show how to use this function in two different scenarios:

Suppose we have the following dataset that shows the total sales of certain products in certain regions for a company:

Now suppose we’d like to filter for rows where the Region does not contain “East.”

To do so, we can define a criteria range:

Next, we can click the Data tab and then click the Advanced Filter button:

We’ll choose A1:C17 as the list range and F1:F2 as the criteria range:

Once we click OK, the dataset will be filtered to only show rows where the Region does not contain “East“:

Suppose we have the following dataset that shows the total sales of certain products in certain regions for a company:

Now suppose we’d like to filter for rows where the Region does not contain “East” or “West.”

To do so, we can define a criteria range:

Next, we can click the Data tab and then click the Advanced Filter button.

We’ll choose A1:C17 as the list range and F1:G2 as the criteria range:

Once we click OK, the dataset will be filtered to only show rows where the Region does not contain “East” or “West“:

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Excel:

Excel Advanced Filter: How to Use “Does Not Contain”