2 of 5
Conditional Formatting
Conditional formatting applies one or more rules to any cells that you want. An example of a rule might be "If the value is greater than 5,000, color the cell yellow." By applying this rule to the cells in a worksheet, you'll be able to
see at a glance which cells are over 5,000. There are also rules that can
mark the top 10 items, all cells that are below the average, cells that are within a certain date range, and many more.
Watch the video to learn about creating conditional formatting
To Create a Conditional Formatting Rule:
- Select the cells that you want to add the formatting to.
- In the Home tab, click the Conditional Formatting command. A drop-down menu will appear.
- Select Highlight Cells Rules or Top/Bottom Rules. We will choose Highlight Cells Rules for this example. A menu will appear with several rules.
- Select the desired rule (Greater Than, for example).
Selecting the Greater Than rule - From the dialog box, enter a value in the space provided, if applicable. In this example, we want to format cells that are greater than $5,000, so we'll enter 5000 as our value. If you want, you can enter a cell reference instead of a number.
- Select a formatting style from the drop-down menu.
Entering a value and formatting style - The formatting will be applied to the selected cells.
The formatted cells
If you want, you can apply more than one rule to your cells.