Conditional Formatting

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Conditional Formatting' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Applying a Conditional Format to a Full Row
Need to conditionally highlight an entire row based on the contents of a single cell in each row? This tip explains how you can set up the conditional format that will do the trick.

Conditional Colors based on Dates
Conditional formatting can be used to draw your attention to certain cells based on what is within those cells. This tip explains how you can use conditional formatting to change the color of cells based upon how close a particular date is to today's date.

Copying Conditional Formats
Conditional formatting is a great feature in Excel. Here's how you can copy conditional formats from one cell to another in a worksheet.

Copying Conditional Formatting
When you create a conditional formatting rule (or set of rules) for a cell, you may want to copy that formatting to another group of cells. It's easy to do, if you apply the technique in this tip.

Defining a Single Condition
Conditional formatting is a powerful tool you can use to dynamically adjust the formatting of your worksheet. This tip explains how you can easily defined a single condition by which formatting can be applied.

Deleting Conditional Formatting
After you've applied a conditional format to a cell, you may have a need to later delete that format so that the cell is treated (and formatted) normally by Excel. Unfortunately, how you delete conditional formats may not be immediately obvious to you.

Distinguishing Blanks and Zeroes in a Conditional Format
Conditional formatting is a great tool. You may need to use this tool to tell the difference between cells that are empty or cells that contain zero values. Here's how to approach the task.

Dividing Lists with Automatic Lines
If you are have a large list of data, you might want the list formatted so that there are dividing lines at natural breaks, such as changes in departments or dates. This tip shows how you can use conditional formatting to get the types of dividing lines you want.

Finding Cells that Use Conditional Formatting
Want to find all the cells in a worksheet that have conditional formatting applied? It's easy to do using the Go To command.

Formatting Negative Percentages
Excel includes quite a few different formats you can use for the information in a worksheet. One format that isn't as easy to set up is for negative percentages. This tip explains the two ways you can format those percentages so they appear red, just like you want.

Formatting Phone Numbers Outside a Desired Range
When entering phone numbers into a worksheet, you may want to make sure that your entries are not outside of a particular range. Here's a couple of ways you can enforce your rules.

Highlighting a Cell if It Contains Specific Text
If you want to highlight cells that contain certain characters, you can use the conditional formatting features of Excel to help out. Here's how to set up the proper conditional format.

Highlighting Cells Containing Formulas
One of the nifty purposes to which you can put conditional formatting is highlighting cells with different types of contents. This tip explains how you can use the tool to highlight cells that contain formulas.

Highlighting Cells Containing Specific Text
Got a worksheet containing a lot of text? Want to know which cells in that worksheet contain some specific information you are seeking? You can use conditional formatting to discover the answer.

Protecting Your Conditional Formatting Rules
Conditional formatting is very powerful, and the formulas you use in your rules can be just as involved as regular worksheet formulas. If you want to protect those conditional formatting formulas, however, you need to jump through a few hoops.

Shading an Empty Cell
When you create a worksheet for others to use, you may want a way to draw attention to cells that users should fill in. One way to do that is to shade the input cells using conditional formatting.

Shading Odd and Even Values
You can use conditional formatting to add shading to various cells in your worksheet. This tip shows how you can shade cells based on whether a value is odd or even.

Using Conditional Formatting to Check for Data Type
Conditional formatting can be used to highlight cells that contain the improper type of data for your needs. This tip examines how to check if either text or numbers have been entered into a cell.

Using Conditional Formatting to Shade Rows
If you need to shade alternating rows in a data table, you'll want to examine how you can accomplish the task with conditional formatting. This tip shows just how easy such shading can be.

Using Conditional Lines to Divide a List
If you have a list of items in a worksheet, you may want an easy way to add a visible dividing line whenever a value changes in a cell. The easiest way is through the use of conditional formatting, as described in this tip.

Working with Multiple Conditions
When you apply conditional formatting, you are not limited to using a single condition. Indeed, you can set up multiple conditions, as described in this tip.