Autofilter header row

[Mister Cul-de-sac]

My experience has been that the first row is where the controls (down arrow)
appear when autofilter is invoked. But I've now been sent a spreadsheet (just
unformatted data in a large table) where the autofilter chooses the second
row. I've compared the new spreadsheet with previous versions and don't see
any difference in layout, etc.

What can be causing this problem? Is there something "invisible" that tells
Excel which is the header row for the data to be filtered?

If I select row 1 and then click autofilter, the controls do appear on row 1
but otherwise it's always row 2 in this spreadsheet.

 

[Gary''s Student]

I have seen this problem if a column (usually on the right) does not have
data in the header cell.

Make sure every column has a non-empty header cell!

 

[ozgrid.com]

AutoFilter can be applied to any row by selecting the row 1st.

 

[Mister Cul-de-sac]

Thanks, upon closer inspection I found that was exactly what had happened.