Excel for Mac is often derided for being inferior to its Windows counterpart. But every now and then, you find the odd scrap and smidgen it does better.

One of them is its table filter dropdown system.

In both versions, clicking the dropdown arrow in a header cell reveals options to sort the values or choose which ones display.

On Windows, these are contained in a ‘box’ that’s stuck in a fixed position. You make your choices and then click OK. The box closes, and the table updates.

Mac’s equivalent is not a box, though — it’s a window you can freely drag around. It even has a close button.

What’s more, there’s an Auto Apply checkbox, which is enabled by default. This lets you apply filters on the go without leaving the window. Having this flexibility makes for a much better experience than having to repeat the filter process each time.

I’d love Auto Apply to come to Windows, but I doubt it will. It’s easy to think it’d be a doddle to implement — but it likely isn’t, as we’ve seen with past improvements.