Using Data Ribbon to Find the Top 5 Items

Below is an excerpt from the new course we are offering entitled "Audit and Analytical Uses for Excel Tables and Filters. It is a free course and has 1 Hour of CPE associated with it. Check it out at http://cpaselfstudy.com/item_185/Audit-Analytical-Uses-for-Excel-Filters-Tables.htm

Finding the Top 5 Invoices

For audit purposes, assume that you wanted to manually select the 5 largest invoices for testing. In this case, you would sort the Sales_Amt. column  by clicking the Sort icon on the Data tab and selecting “Sort Largest to Smallest”. The top portion of the result is displayed below. Notice that all the related data is also moved.

That was the quick and dirty way and works if the data list is relatively small. If the list was larger, you would want to use a Number Filter to identify only the Top 5 invoices. In this case, you would click the drop down box next to Sales_Amt and choose “Number Filters”, then select “Top 10…” as shown below.

Using the arrow keys next to the number “10”, click on the down arrow until the number “5” appears. This will filter the list to the Top 5 items. It will now look like the figure below: