Filter and search groups

6 steps 4 min Updated 4 November 2026

The Groups page has filtering and sorting so you can find the groups you need without scrolling a long list. It also answers the question from the other direction — which groups is this person in?

Before you start

You must be an admin with the Manage users & groups permission for the school (or a MAT admin for the trust-wide version).

Steps

Step 1: Open the Groups page

Select Groups in the left sidebar (under Users & Groups). To work across every school you administer, switch to MAT overview — all schools in the school switcher, then select Groups under Users & Groups.

The page heading shows how many groups match, for example 42 groups.

Step 2: Search by group name

Type into the Search box on the filter bar (it says Group name…) to match anywhere in the group name. Results update as you type.

Step 3: Apply additional filters

Select Filters (or press f) to open the filter panel on the right. Changes apply as you go, and the Filters button shows how many are active. The panel is grouped into sections:

Identity

Group name starts with — e.g. Year 7 to find one year's groups
Group name ends with — e.g. Maths to find a subject's groups

Filters

School — MAT Groups page only; limit to one or more schools in your trust
Status — Active, Protected, Suspended, or Deleted
Group type — Teachers of, Houses, Registration groups, Role groups, Year groups, Subjects, or Groups (the catch-all for everything else, including groups you create by hand)
Only Google Classrooms — show only groups that are also a Google Classroom
Classroom state — Active, Archived, Provisioned, or Declined

Membership

Has member — pick one or more people; the list narrows to the groups they are in

Each filter you apply shows as a chip under the bar; select the × on a chip to remove it.

Step 4: Find the groups one person is in

Open Filters, go to the Membership section, and start typing a name or username into Has member. The list of people is searched as you type and shows the closest 50 matches, so keep typing to narrow it. Tick the person you want. On the MAT Overview Groups page the list stays empty until you type — it searches every school in your trust.

The Groups list then shows only the groups that person is a member of. Their name appears as a chip below the filter bar; select the × on the chip to remove them again.

Step 5: Sort the list

Select a column header to sort by it. Select again to toggle ascending and descending. Sortable columns are Name, Status, Classroom, and Updated.

Step 6: Clear filters

Select Clear all — on the chip row or at the bottom of the filter panel — to reset every filter and see the full list again. Select Done to close the panel.

What the list shows

Each row is a group: Name (select it, or anywhere on the row, to open the group), Status, Type, the number of Members, its Classroom state (a dash when it has no Google Classroom) and when it was Updated. On the MAT Groups page there is also a School column. Deleted groups stay in the list with a Deleted badge — use the Status filter to show just one status. The list shows 50 groups a page.

Result

The list shows only the matching groups, with the member count for each. Filters stack, so you can combine Has member with a status or type filter — for example, one person's Teachers of groups only.

Good to know

Picking two people shows the groups containing either of them, not only the groups they share. Add one person at a time if you want a single person's groups.
Only direct membership counts. If someone is in a group only because a nested group they belong to was added to it, that parent group is not listed.
On the Groups page you can only pick people from the school you are working in. To find someone's groups across the whole trust, use MAT → Groups — there the people list spans every school you administer and each person is shown with their school, so you can tell two people with the same name apart.
Switching school clears the filter: a person from one school is never carried into another school's list.

Tips

To go the other way — start from a person and look at their memberships — open the user and use the Memberships tab on their profile. The Has member filter is the list-wide version of the same question, and is the quicker route when you want to act on those groups in bulk.
Combine Has member with Status: Deleted to check whether someone is still attached to groups that are on their way out.

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