Multiple tags within a cells

Hi guys,

I am interested in making a column within my tables with multiple tags, so that when I use Filter, any cell with that same tag will stay in the resulting table.

Maybe an example will help.


Imagine I have a table with
A1: Name
B1: Animals
C1: Tags

A2: Bob
B2: Dog
C2: Brown, 4 Legs, Spots, Old, Dog, No teeth, pees on the floor

A3: Marley
B3: Cat
C3: Brown, Cat, 4 Legs, mean

A3: Greg
B3: Bird
C3: Red, 2 Legs, French


With the table above
I would be interested in something similar to Filter (Data > Sort & Filter > Filter).
Where If I:
Picked "4 Legs", both Marley and Bob would show up.
Picked "Dog", only Bob shows up.
Picked "Red", only Greg shows up.
Picked "pees on the floor", only Bob shows up.


More or less, I want to be able to throw tags into a single cell, and then be able to sort using them. (I don't want to have a separate column for each category.)

Ideally when creating a new Row, with Column C, Would be able to add any of the previous entries within other Column C Cells.
The order of tags shouldn't matter:
C2: Brown, 4 Legs, Spots, Old, Dog, No teeth, pees on the floor
should be the same as
C2: Brown, 4 Legs, Spots, Old, pees on the floor, Dog, No teeth

etc.


Is there a way to do this without VBA, is there a better program for something like this? Is there a way to make this using vba?

Cheers guys,
Jimmy

You can do all of that with the Advanced Filter feature. It uses a separate Criteria range (column E for this example).

In E1, put the header name of the column you want to filter on; Tags
In E2, put your filter criteria and surround it with asterisks e.g.; *4 Legs*
You could include multiple tag in E3 and E4 if you like. They act as OR criteria.

Select your data in columns A:C
Select from the menu Data\Filter\Advanced Filter
Select E1:E? as the criteria range and Okay

If you wanted to get fancy, you could put dropdown lists in the E2, E3 etc. to make it easier to select Tags. You could record the Advanced filter part and then assign that macro to a button on the sheet.

Here is a VBA solution using two sheets

Option Explicit

Sub Crit()
    Dim s1 As Worksheet, s2 As Worksheet
    Set s1 = Sheets("Sheet1")
    Set s2 = Sheets("Sheet2")
    Dim i As Long, lr As Long, lr2 As Long
    Dim sCrit As String
    lr = s1.Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
    s2.Range("A1").CurrentRegion.ClearContents
    sCrit = InputBox("What are you searching for?")
    For i = 2 To lr
        lr2 = s2.Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
        If InStr(s1.Range("C" & i), sCrit) > 0 Then
            s1.Range("C" & i).EntireRow.Copy s2.Range("A" & lr2 + 1)
        End If
    Next i
    Application.CutCopyMode = False
End Sub

Some pretty cool answers,

I'm going to have to play around with this when I get a chance in the future. Will mark as solved afterwards.

Thanks all!