Color coding with excel

How to Automatically Color Code in Excel

MS Excel is one of the most powerful and versatile programs in the MS Office bundle. Unless you work with spreadsheets, you probably don’t even use this program, but it is important to realize just how tweakable and programmable it really is. For instance, you could program the Monopoly boardgame using nothing but Excel. Color coding, however, is much easier to use in this great spreadsheet program.

Conditional formatting gives you the ability to automize cell formatting in accordance with the inserted value in MS Excel. The most popular type of conditional formatting in Excel is automatic color coding.

This is very useful for presentation and visualization, but also in instances where creating gradually changing shades (depending on the cell value) is essential in capturing the big picture of a spreadsheet. The best example of this is sorting temperature values by months.

The Big Picture

Jumping right into color coding is certainly a possibility, but, in truth, conditional formatting takes planning before anything else. During the planning process, whenever you come up with a color-coding idea, ask yourself: “Does this make my life simpler or more complicated?” Technically, you could “tell” Excel to color every cell that contains an irrational number red. This is not necessarily a bad idea, but if you also plan to color code it to change shade intensity as the numbers grow, it may end up confusing.

On the other hand, if you’re creating a spreadsheet for a maths class, wanting your irrational number cells to be colored red is a perfectly imaginable and a viable idea. The point is, you shouldn’t jump straight into color coding without actually thinking about how you’re going to make the entire spreadsheet picture become the best it can be. This takes time and a lot of trial and error.

Basic Color Coding Options

There are a number of options that can help you in your color coding task and knowing how each one works will make your job easier.

Highlight Duplicates

This is one of the most basic color coding tasks that you give Excel. What it essentially does, is it marks all the duplicate names in the same color. This may help you remove the duplicate names, or may assist you in further spreadsheet analysis. Here’s how to highlight duplicates.

1. First, you’ll need to select the range of cells that you want to check for duplicates. Of course, by pressing Ctrl + A, you’ll select every cell in the table.
   
2. Go to the Home tab and navigate to Conditional Formatting.
   
3. Under Conditional Formatting, go to Highlight Cell Rules, and then to Duplicate Values.
   
4. The Window that pops up offers you to select the format from two drop-down lists.
   
5. The first drop-down list allows you to choose which cells you want colored, Duplicate ones or the Unique
   
6. The second drop-down list offers you a set of available colors.
   
7. Press OK.
   

Sort by Color

Sorting your list by color takes you a step further from duplicate highlighting. If you’ve highlighted the duplicates, the sort by color option will allow you to sort them together, which works fantastically with larger lists. Here’s how to do it:

1. Select the desired data range.
2. Go to Data ->Sort & Filter ->Sort.
3. Select the desired column in your data range.
4. For the Sort on option, select Cell Color.
5. Choose a color in the Order
6. Select On Top in the final drop-down list.
7. Hit OK.

This will sort your list and put the duplicates at the top.

Highlight Top 10

Whether we’re talking about geography, finances, or temperatures, the top 10 items on a list tend to tell a good part of the list’s story. Of course, using the same principle below, you can highlight the bottom 10, top 10%, bottom 10%, above average, below average, and many other data groups.

1. Select the desired data range
2. Go to the Home
3. Click Conditional Formatting.
4. Go to Top/Bottom Rules.
5. Select Top 10 Items.
6. In the window that pops up, adjust the number of options you want (you can do more and less than 10, of course).
7. Now select the fill color.
8. Hit OK.

Advanced Options

These were some basic color coding options that Excel offers. Now, let’s go over the more advanced tasks. Don’t worry, they aren’t any more complicated than the previous three.

Show Variances with Data Bars

Data bars essentially draws a bar in each cell, with the length corresponding to the cell value of other cells. Here’s a picture to explain it.

Here’s how to select the column/range that you want to format.

1. Select the desired data range
2. Go to the Home
3. Navigate to Conditional Formatting ->Data Bars.
4. Select the desired color and fill style.

Highlight Positive, Neutral, and Negative Values with Icon Sets

This will show you how to custom set the positive, neutral, and negative values next to items. This is very useful for sales and revenue breakdowns.

1. Select the column/range that you want to format.
2. Go to the Home
3. Navigate to Conditional Formatting ->Icon Sets.
4. Choose the icon style that you want to use.
5. Excel will automatically interpret your data.
   
6. If you want to change it, go to Manage Rules under Conditional Formatting.
7. Choose the Icon Set rule and click Edit Rule.
8. Adjust the rules according to your preferences.
   

Show Variances with Color Scales

Using the Color Scales under Conditional Formatting works pretty much the same way as the Icon Sets, only displays the result differently and with more gradients.

1. Select the range.
2. Find Color Scales in Conditional Formatting.
3. Choose the color scale.

Smooth and Easy

Conditional formatting is pretty much basic formatting with some rule setting. Nevertheless, it is very useful and brings out Excel’s true nature – it’s more than a tool for table formatting, its an ultimate program for creating spreadsheets.

What interesting tips do you have to share about Excel? People who work with spreadsheets tend to have their own processes. How does your work? Hit the comment section below with any advice, tips, and questions.

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How to Enter Your Custom Color Codes in Microsoft Excel

If you want to look polished, then you have no other choice but to customize your visualization’s color palette. Don’t worry–customizing your colors is an easy low-hanging-fruit edit. Locate your style guide, scroll down to the color section, and decode the jargon. If you don’t have a style guide, or can’t find it, identify your color codes with an eyedropper or with Paint.

Then, enter your color codes in Excel!

Step 1: Make Your Chart

Build your graph. Here’s a histogram that displays how many people fell into each age range. The default graph has Microsoft’s blue.

Step 2: Edit Your Chart as Needed

Declutter that cluttered graph. Delete the border, grid lines, title, and vertical axis. Label the columns directly. Nudge the columns closer together.

Step 3: Select Your Chart

Now it’s time to customize the color. Click on the bar, line, or pie wedge that you want to adjust. Can you see that the columns are selected?

Step 4: Click on More Fill Colors

Go to Chart Tools, then Format, and then Shape Outline (line graphs) or Shape Fill (all other types of graphs, like this one). Ignore the default colors! Go to the bottom where it says More Fill Colors.

Step 5: Choose a Custom Fill

On the pop-up window, click on the Custom tab.

Step 6: Type Your RGB Codes

Enter your RGB code. RGB stands for red, green, and blue. This is the recipe of reds, greens, and blues that get mixed together to produce your exact shade.

I used 120, 29, 125, which is the exact shade of purple from a client’s logo. Now I can quickly customize other pieces of the graph, like the numeric labels, because that purple is already stored under Recent Colors.

Bonus

With just a few clicks, custom colors reinforce branding and make you look professional.

I love doing this, but every time I turn off my computer, the RGB codes go away. I’ve become pretty good at memorizing them, but is there a way to save the RGB codes somewhere in Word or Excel so I can reuse them? Right now I keep track of them in Evernote.

Yes! Go to Page Layout –> Colors –> Customize Colors.

You just made my life soooo much easier – thank you!

I prefer to use Custom Colors as it always make the data much presentable. This is a good piece of info.

[…] locate your color codes with an eyedropper, or locate your color codes with Microsoft Paint. Then, enter your color codes in Excel or in […]

I’m using Excel version 2019 Volume 16.59 and cannot find the customize color feature. Was this added in later versions? And if so is there a work around so i can create a custom color palette?
Thank you

Are you using a Mac by any chance? If so, go into PowerPoint and try it there. Let me know if that works. Otherwise, we can keep troubleshooting. — Ann

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How to Color Code in Excel for Financial Models (PC/Windows Version) [Tutorial Video] (32:42)

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to apply color coding and formatting to financial models and fix problems with decimals, currency signs, indentation, alignment, links vs. formulas vs. constants, and more – and you’ll practice by fixing the formatting on the Summary spreadsheet.

• Tutorial Summary
• Files & Resources
• Premium Course

This sample lesson from our Excel/VBA course covers how to color code in Excel and some of the key principles for formatting financial models.

Table of Contents:

1:06: Formatting Principles

11:02: Demonstration of Walmart Model Fixes

19:59: Exercise – Summary Spreadsheet Fixes

30:34: Recap and Summary

We have some general guidelines for model formatting, but these are not like the laws of physics (gravity, momentum, speed of light, etc.) – they’re “rules of thumb” rather than “laws of nature.”

How to Color Code in Excel: Key PC and Mac Shortcuts

We use the following colors for different types of cells:

To find and select these cells, you can use the following PC/Windows shortcuts:

F5: Jump to Cell

F5, Alt + S, O, X: Select Constants (Drop the X if you want to highlight text constants)

F5, Alt + S, F, X: Select Formulas (Drop the X to highlight textual formulas)

Ctrl + 1: Format Dialog Box

Ctrl + F: Find

For example, if you press F5, Alt + S, O, X, that will highlight all constants on the spreadsheet. You can then press Ctrl + 1 to change their font color to blue, or you can access the font color commands from the “Home” tab in the ribbon menu.

To find direct links to other spreadsheets in the file, you can press Ctrl + F and search for the “!” character, which always indicates links to other sheets.

To find links to other files, search for “.xls” using Ctrl + F, and change the font color to red for each instance.

In the Mac version of Excel, you can use these shortcuts instead:

F5 or Ctrl + G: Jump to Cell

F5 or Ctrl + G, Special, Constants: Select Constants (Drop the X if you want to highlight text constants)

F5 or Ctrl + G, Special, Formulas: Select Formulas (Drop the X to highlight textual formulas)

⌘ + 1: Format Dialog Box

⌘ + F: Find

How to Color Code in Excel: What Financial Models Should Look Like

If you follow these standards for color coding, your financial models should look like the examples below.

Here’s the normal color-coding scheme:

We use a yellow background and grey border for “input cells” that are assumptions or drivers in the model, while we use a white background with no borders for historical financial data:

Here are a few other examples of cell colors based on their categories and contents:

Other Principles of Financial Model Formatting

In addition to the points above about color-coding, we follow these guidelines with other types of formatting:

Centering: We use the “Accounting” format and variations of the “Percentage” format for most numbers, so centering is not an issue there. For the input boxes, we prefer to center percentages, dates, text, and normal numbers, but we do not apply it to anything in the “Accounting” format.

Dollar or Other Currency Signs: Only display these in the top row and bottom row of schedules. Sometimes it’s a bit ambiguous what a “schedule” is – often, we’ll display these in the top and bottom rows of each major segment.

“Units”: We like to use an extra column to display the units, especially in schedules that mix $ per Sq Ft and Sq Ft and other figures with actual $, to remove ambiguity.

Indentation: We indent the individual rows within each category, and we use multiple indents for sub-categories. We also indent percentages used for informational purposes such as the margin formulas.

Signs: On the IS and CFS, we often use (+) and (-) when it is meaningful to do so – for example, if everything in a row is going to be positive or negative, and it’s easy to specify which is which.

Italics: We usually italicize percentages used for informational purposes – so, the overall margins and revenue growth rates, but not the assumptions used to calculate them in the first place. Those are in the yellow input boxes!

Decimals: It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re consistent. Use 1 decimal, 0 decimals, or 2 decimal places for all the financial figures in your model… exceptions apply for the Share Price and EPS figures, which almost always use 2 decimal places because of how share prices are displayed.

We also usually use at least 1 decimal place, sometimes up to 2-3, to display the company’s share count. Usually 1 decimal place for valuation multiples and percentages as well – even if the financial figures in the model have 0 decimal places, as is the case here.

Headers: We use a blue background color, white text, and the “FY” format for the top header with the Historical and Projected years. We then use a grey background color for the other headers in a schedule – sometimes display the years on top depending on the spacing.

You can view examples of these standards in action below:

How to Automate the Color-Coding Process in Excel

It’s difficult to automate “all” this formatting, but you can automate much of the color-coding process if you feel comfortable using VBA, which we cover in the final module of this course.

In short, you can use the .SpecialCells, Union, and Intersect commands to find the appropriate cells, loop through them, and change the colors appropriately.

You can get the full Excel file (.xlsm) or just the .xlam file for the VBA code itself below:

Note: You must know Excel fairly well to use macros. If not, you could do serious damage to your spreadsheets. If you have little experience in Excel, then you should not mess around with this macro.

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