How to Use a Case Sensitive Filter in Excel

You can use the following syntax to perform a case-sensitive filter in Excel:

=FILTER(A2:C11,EXACT(A2:A11,"mavericks"))

This particular formula filters the cells in the range A2:C11 to only return the rows where cells in the range A2:A11 contain “mavericks” in all lowercase letters.

By using the EXACT function, we specify that the text in the range A2:A11 must exactly match the text “mavericks” including the case.

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: How to Use Case Sensitive Filter in Excel

First, let’s enter the following dataset in Excel that contains information about various basketball players:

Suppose we would like to filter the rows to only show the ones where the name in the team column is “mavericks” in all lowercase letters.

We can type the following formula into cell E2 to do so:

=FILTER(A2:C11,EXACT(A2:A11,"mavericks"))

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

Excel case sensitive filter

Notice that the filtered dataset only contains the rows where the Team names from the original dataset in the range A2:A11 exactly match the case “mavericks” in all lowercase.

The formula does not return rows where the team name is “Mavericks” or “MAVERICKS” since these two phrases don’t match “mavericks” with their case.

If you would instead like to filter for “Mavericks” in title case, you can do so:

=FILTER(A2:C11,EXACT(A2:A11,"Mavericks"))

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

Notice that the filtered dataset only contains the rows where the Team names from the original dataset in the range A2:A11 exactly match the case “Mavericks” in title case.