The conditional formatting in excel allows you to

Have you ever stared at a spreadsheet looking for the important stuff? The problem with many spreadsheets is that all the cells look the same. So you have to hunt for key or actionable information. In this tutorial, I’ll show how to highlight cells in Excel using built-in conditional formatting criteria. (Includes practice file.) Tutorial Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • I routinely see this scenario. You get a spreadsheet from someone with hundreds of data rows that look the same. Everything is formatted in the same boring way. But is the data the same? Are therecell valuesthat are different from the rest? Is something outside the average? These are typical questions users have when they open spreadsheets. What is Conditional Formatting in Excel? Instead of having the reader scan each cell, you can have Microsoft Excel do some legwork using some rules. This allowsExcelto apply a defined format to a range of cells that meet specific criteria or conditions.These defined rules evaluate a cell value to see if it meets a specific criteria. If the condition is met, certain formatting is applied to the cell. The goal is to make important information stand out so you can find it easier. Excelalready does some of this for you. For example, when you format numbers, there are options to display negative numbers in red. This is an example of a predefined format. The program even allows you to use formatting options on individual cells or rows. The simplest method is to have Excel app...

Conditional formatting is one of my favorite features in both Excel and Google Sheets. I love the way it can make a boring hard-to-interpret spreadsheet more interesting and easier to use. Conditional formatting is mostly used for data analysis, such as adding color scales, highlighting high and low values, identifying duplicates, and marking outliers. Conditional formatting can be also used for graphical interface elements such as progress bars, graying out completed tasks, changing number formats, or displaying a gantt chart. In this article, I'll show over 20 different ways that you can use conditional formatting, starting with some basics and presenting some advanced techniques as well. Many of the examples come from templates that you can download and experiment with. Download the Example File (ConditionalFormatting.xlsx) Conditional Formatting in a spreadsheet allows you to change the format of a cell (font color, background color, border, etc.) based on the value in a cell or range of cells, or based on whether a formula rule returns TRUE. To Apply Conditional Formatting in Excel: First, select the cells you want to format. Then, go to Home > Conditional Formatting and select an option from the built in menu, or click on Manage Rules. To Apply Conditional Formatting in Google Sheets: First, select the cells you want to format. Then, go to Format > Conditional Formatting and click on "Add another rule" in the side panel. NOTE Google Sheets currently provides fewer co...

Some of the content in this topic may not be applicable to some languages. Conditional formatting makes it easy to highlight certain values or make particular cells easy to identify. This changes the appearance of a cell range based on a condition (or criteria). You can use conditional formatting to highlight cells that contain values which meet a certain condition. Or you can format a whole cell range and vary the exact format as the value of each cell varies. Temperature information with conditional formatting applied that shows top 10% and bottom 10% values Temperature information with 3-color scale conditional formatting applied Apply conditional formatting • Select the range of cells, the table, or the whole sheet that you want to apply conditional formatting to. • On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting. • Do one of the following: To highlight Do this Values in specific cells. Examples are dates after this week, or numbers between 50 and 100, or the bottom 10% of scores. Point to Highlight Cells Rules or Top/Bottom Rules, and then click the appropriate option. The relationship of values in a cell range. Extends a band of color across the cell. Examples are comparisons of prices or populations in the largest cities. Point to Data Bars, and then click the fill that you want. The relationship of values in a cell range. Applies a color scale where the intensity of the cell's color reflects the value's placement toward the top or bottom of the range. An example is s...

These instructions apply to Excel 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, and Excel for Microsoft 365. Applying Multiple Conditions in Excel You can apply more than one rule to the same data to test for different conditions. For example, budget data might have conditions set that apply formatting changes when certain levels of spending are reached, such as 50%, 75%, and 100%, of the total budget. In the final portion of the tutorial we will add formulas to cells C2:C4 that show the exact A2:A5 and B2:B5; this will allow us to check the accuracy of the conditional formatting rules. Setting Conditional Formatting Rules First, we'll apply conditional formatting to find a 25 percent or more significant increase. The background color of cell B3 should stay the same indicating that the percent difference between the numbers in cells A3 and B3 is greater than 25 percent but less than or equal to 50 percent. The background color of cell B5 should change to the new color you selected indicating that the percent difference between the numbers in cells A5 and B5 is greater than 50 percent. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, chang...

This tutorial gives a complete view of how to use conditional formatting and what options are available. It also gives you a list of examples you can learn to use in the real world while working with data. What is Conditional Formatting? Conditional Formatting is an option to apply to a cell or a range with a condition. When you use it, it tests a condition first, and if that condition is TRUE, then only it will apply the Formatting. For example, you want to use red for all the cells in a range with an error or all the blank cells. You can use conditional Formatting in two ways: • Pre-Defined Rules • Custom Rule with a Formula In this tutorial, we will learn about both. Simple Example to Understand Conditional Formatting Let’s take an example to understand conditional Formatting. In the example below, you have name data here and must highlight the cells with an “Aryan” in the name. Let’s understand this: Here, we have a condition test for the cells with the text “Aryan” in it. And only the cells where you have this text are highlighted. Note: Conditional Formatting is one of the most useful tools to help you quickly analyze Excel and real-time data. Available Pre-Defined Conditional Formatting Rules Five major options have pre-defined rules for you to use for conditional Formatting. With pre-defined options, there comes the pre-defined Formatting to apply. Even further, you can customize these options per your needs; let’s say, if you want to highlight the top 20 values in...

You've heard of data visualization, right? It's the art and science of presenting data in a way so that people can "see" important information at-a-glance. Data visualization makes complex data more accessible and useful. In a world overflowing with data, it's more valuable than ever. Excel has a great tool for visualizing data called Conditional Formatting. If you work with data in Excel (and who doesn't these days?) you'll find it incredibly useful. By creating simple rules that highlight just the data you are interested in, you can spot key information very quickly. To help get you started, and to give you some inspiration, here are some cool ways that you can use Excel conditional formatting to help you understand data faster. Highlight duplicate or unique values One of the handy ways you can use conditional formatting is to quickly highlight duplicate or unique values. Excel contains built-in rules to make both of these tasks easy. For example, suppose you have this table of zip codes, and you want to highlight those zip codes that appear more than once (i.e. duplicates)? With over 160 zip codes in the list, it's almost impossible for the human eye to spot duplicate codes. But using Conditional Formatting, you can just select the table and tell Excel to highlight duplicates using a built-in conditional formatting rule for duplicates: With just a few clicks, here is the result: Alternately, suppose you have this table of names and you need to find only those that appea...

How to Use Conditional Formatting to Highlight Text in Excel Conditional formatting in Excel is formatting that changes with the cell content. That means you don’t have to change it when the cell content changes. You use conditional formatting to make it easier for the user to identify key points of interest. That could be: • All cells that contain the name of a certain employee • All rows regarding a certain order number Or a lot of other things. Follow this step-by-step guide and learn to highlight text with conditional formatting in Excel. And a bit more😉 Highlight text with conditional formatting The reason for highlighting text with conditional formatting is to draw the user’s attention to those cells – so they find relevant information faster🏃 You apply conditional formatting with what is called conditional formatting rules. It’s really easy to insert one of those. 1. Select all the cells where the text you want to highlight can be. In the sample data, I want to identify all L compatible adapters. So, I select all cells in column B (from cell B2 and down). As you type it, you can see the conditional formatting applied instantly. The formatting being applied is the standard conditional formatting format. 5. To change the format, click the drop-down arrow in the right field and select another of the formatting presets. 6. Or you can create your own format by clicking ‘Custom format’. Highlight numbers with conditional formatting Sometimes you’re not reading all your da...