Good morning kallisti

...and welcome to the forum!!

As you have now discovered, the autofilters don’t quite work like that.

The only easy way I can think that you would accomplish that is to use autofilters, but rather than using the dropdown list to select categories, consider using Text Filters > Contains.

It’s not quite the slick methodology you first envisaged, but without getting involved in macros and the like it’s not too bad a solution.

HTH

DominicB