SharePoint 2010 : Specify How Items in a View Are Filtered

To define filter criteria for a view, scroll in the view creation page to the Filter section (see Figure 1). By default, no filter is applied on a new view, so the view displays all items.

Figure 1. The Filter section in the view creation page.

To define a filter, use the column picker drop-down and select the column based on which you want to filter items. Then choose the operator that you want for the filter and the value you want to use for the comparison. For example, if you want to filter a view to display only items that have a title (excluding the items that do not have a value in the Title column), choose the Title column in the column drop-down, select Is Not Equal To, and leave the value box empty (see Figure 8.12). This forms the condition Title Is Not Equal to Nothing.

Another example for a filter you might want to create on a view would be items that you or another person created. The simplest way to do this is to choose the Created By column in the column drop-down, select the Is Equal To operator, and then enter the name of the person you want (either you or anyone else) in the value box (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Setting a filter for the Created By column by typing the name of the person.

When you browse to the new view, the documents (or list items) are displayed only if they were created by a user with exactly the same name that you typed (in this example, Jane Doe).

If you want the filter to be dynamic and change based on the person, you can use a token instead of typing the person’s actual name. For example, you can use the [Me] token instead of the value; this is replaced with the name of the user viewing the view and is not limited to a name you chose beforehand (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Setting a filter for a view that displays for every user his or her documents, using the [Me] token.

This capability is useful when you want to set up a public view (for everyone to use) so that anyone visiting the view can see his or her documents or items without requiring you to create a view for each person separately.

You can add, or chain, up to 10 filter conditions in each view. To add an additional filter condition, first decide how the filter will be added—using either the AND or the OR operators. You use the OR operator when you want the items or files to be displayed if they match at least one of the filter conditions.

For example, you can set the first filter column to Created By Is Equal to John Doe and use the OR operator to add the second filter column, Created By Is Equal to Jane Doe (see Figure 4). This condition sets the view to display only documents that were created by either John Doe or Jane Doe.

Figure 4. Setting up two filters, using the OR chaining operator to show documents that were created by either John Doe or Jane Doe.

By using the AND chaining operator, you can create conditions such as Created By Is Equal to John Doe and Created Is Equal to Today. This operator restricts the view to display only documents that match both filters. Another example would be to create the filters Created By Is Not Equal to John Doe and Created By Is Not Equal To Jane Doe (see Figure 5). When viewing this view, the users see all files (or items) that have been created by users other than John Doe or Jane Doe.

Figure 5. Adding another filter criterion and joining the criterion with the AND chaining operator.

You can continue and add up to 10 filters, as mentioned earlier. To add additional filters after the first two, use the Show More Columns link below the last filter. Every time you click this link, a new filter criterion section appears.

If you want to remove a condition from the filter, just change the column in the column picker drop-down to None. Even though the condition section still shows, the filter does not have that condition when you save the view.