How do you highlight in excel

In a cell select the data that you want to display in a different color or format. Double-click the cell and then drag across the contents of the cell that you want to select. Click the cell and then drag across the contents of the cell that you want to select in the formula bar.

How do you highlight specific data in Excel?

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 point to Highlight Cells Rules and then click Text that Contains. In the box next to containing type the text that you want to highlight and then click OK.

How do you quickly highlight in Excel?

Highlight cells

Unlike other Microsoft Office programs, such as Word, Excel does not provide a button that you can use to highlight all or individual portions of data in a cell.

However, you can mimic highlights on a cell in a worksheet by filling the cells with a highlighting color. For a fast way to mimic a highlight, you can create a custom cell style that you can apply to fill cells with a highlighting color. Then, after you apply that cell style to highlight cells, you can quickly copy the highlighting to other cells by using Format Painter.

If you want to make specific data in a cell stand out, you can display that data in a different font color or format.

Create a cell style to highlight cells

Click Home > New Cell Styles.

If you don’t see Cell Style, click the More button next to the cell style gallery.

In the Style name box, type an appropriate name for the new cell style.

Tip: For example, type Highlight.

In the Format Cells dialog box, on the Fill tab, select the color that you want to use for the highlight, and then click OK.

Click OK to close the Style dialog box.

The new style will be added under Custom in the cell styles box.

On the worksheet, select the cells or ranges of cells that you want to highlight. How to select cells?

On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click the new custom cell style you created.

Note: Custom cell styles are displayed at the top of the list of cell styles. If you see the cell styles box in the Styles group, and the new cell style is one of the first six cell styles on the list, you can click that cell style directly in the Styles group.

Use Format Painter to apply a highlight to other cells

Select a cell that is formatted with the highlight that you want to use.

On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, double-click Format Painter , and then drag the mouse pointer across as many cells or ranges of cells that you want to highlight.

When you’re done, click Format Painter again or press ESC to turn it off.

Display specific data in a different font color or format

In a cell, select the data that you want to display in a different color or format.

How to select data in a cell

To select the contents of a cell

Double-click the cell, and then drag across the contents of the cell that you want to select.

In the formula bar

Click the cell, and then drag across the contents of the cell that you want to select in the formula bar.

By using the keyboard

Press F2 to edit the cell, use the arrow keys to position the insertion point, and then press SHIFT+ARROW key to select the contents.

On the Home tab, in the Font group, do one of the following:

To change the text color, click the arrow next to Font Color and then, under Theme Colors or Standard Colors, click the color that you want to use.

To apply the most recently selected text color, click Font Color .

To apply a color other than the available theme colors and standard colors, click More Colors, and then define the color that you want to use on the Standard tab or Custom tab of the Colors dialog box.

To change the format, click Bold , Italic , or Underline .

Keyboard shortcut You can also press CTRL+B, CTRL+I, or CTRL+U.

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How to Highlight in Excel

Colorize your data for maximum impact

What to Know

• To highlight: Select a cell or group of cells >Home >Cell Styles, and select the color to use as the highlight.
• To highlight text: Select the text >Font Color and choose a color.
• To create a highlight style: Home >Cell Styles >New Cell Style. Enter a name, select Format >Fill, choose color >OK.

This article explains how to highlight in Excel. Additional instructions cover how to create a customized highlight style. Instructions apply to Excel 2019, 2016, and Excel for Microsoft 365.

Why Highlight?

Choosing to highlight cells in Excel can be a great way to make sure data or words stand out or increase readability within a file with a lot of information. You can select both cells and text as a highlight in Excel, and you can also customize the colors to suit your needs. Here’s how to highlight in Excel.

How to Highlight Cells in Excel

Spreadsheet cells are the boxes that contain text within a Microsoft Excel document, though many are also completely empty. Both empty and filled Excel cells can be customized in a variety of different ways, including being given a colored highlight.

Open the Microsoft Excel document on your device.

Select a cell you want to highlight.

To select a group of cells in Excel, select one, press Shift, then select another. Alternatively, you can select individual cells that are separate from each other by holding down Ctrl while you select them.

From the top menu, select Home, followed by Cell Styles.

A menu with a variety of cell color options pops up. Hover your mouse cursor over each color to see a live preview of the cell color change in the Excel file.

When you find a highlight color that you like, select it to apply the change.

If you change your mind, press Ctrl+Z to undo the cell highlight.

Repeat for any other cells that you want to apply a highlight to.

To select all of the cells in a column or row, select the numbers on the side of the document or the letters at the top.

How to Highlight Text in Excel

If you just want to highlight text in Excel instead of the entire cell, you can do that too. Here’s how to highlight in Excel when you just want to change the color of the words in the cell.

Open your Microsoft Excel document.

Double-click the cell containing text you want to format.

If you’re having trouble performing a double-click, you may need to adjust your mouse sensitivity.

Press the left mouse button and drag it across the words you want to colorize to highlight them. A small menu appears.

Select the Font Color icon in the small menu to use the default color option or select the arrow next to it to choose a custom color.

You can also use this menu to apply bold or italics style options as you would in Microsoft Word and other text editor programs.

Select a text color from the pop-up color palette.

The color is applied to the selected text. Select elsewhere in the Excel document to deselect the cell.

How to Create a Microsoft Excel Highlight Style

There are a lot of default cell style options in Microsoft Excel. However, if you don’t like any of the available choices, you can create your own personal style.

Open a Microsoft Excel document.

Select Home, followed by Cell Styles.

Select New Cell Style.

Enter a name for the new cell style and then select Format.

Select Fill in the Format Cells window.

Choose a fill color from the palette. Choose the Alignment, Font or Border tabs to make other changes to the new style and then select OK to save it.

You should now see your custom cell style at the top of the Cell Styles menu.

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How to highlight active row and column in Excel

by Svetlana Cheusheva, updated on March 9, 2023

In this tutorial, you will learn 3 different ways to dynamically highlight the row and column of a selected cell in Excel.

When viewing a large worksheet for a long time, you may eventually lose track of where your cursor is and which data you are looking at. To know exactly where you are at any moment, get Excel to automatically highlight the active row and column for you! Naturally, the highlighting should be dynamic and change every time you select another cell. Essentially, this is what we are aiming to achieve:

Auto-highlight row and column of selected cell with VBA

This example shows how you can highlight an active column and row programmatically with VBA. For this, we will be using the SelectionChange event of the Worksheet object.

First, you clear the background color of all cells on the sheet by setting the ColorIndex property to 0. And then, you highlight the entire row and column of the active cell by setting their ColorIndex property to the index number for the desired color.

Customizing the code

If you’d like to customize the code for your needs, these small tips may come in handy:

• Our sample code uses two different colors demonstrated in the above gif — color index 38 for row and 24 for column. To change the highlight color, just replace those with any ColorIndex codes of your choosing.
• To get the row and column colored in the same way, use the same color index number for both.
• To only highlight the active row, remove or comment out this line: .EntireColumn.Interior.ColorIndex = 24
• To only highlight the active column, remove or comment out this line: .EntireRow.Interior.ColorIndex = 38

How to add the code to your worksheet

To have the code silently executed in the background of a specific worksheet, you need to insert it in the code window belonging to that worksheet, not in the normal module. To have it done, carry out these steps:

1. In your workbook, press Alt + F11 to get to the VBA editor.
2. In the Project Explorer on the left, you’ll see a list of all open workbooks and their worksheets. If you don’t see it, use the Ctrl + R shortcut to bring the Project Explorer window to view.
3. Find the target workbook. In its Microsoft Excel Objects folder, double-click on the sheet in which you want to apply highlighting. In this example, it’s Sheet 1.
4. In the Code window on the right, paste the above code.
5. Save your file as Macro-Enabled Workbook (.xlsm).

Advantages: everything is done in the backend; no adjustments/customizations are needed on the user’s side; works in all Excel versions.

Drawbacks: there are two essential downsides that make this technique inapplicable under certain circumstances:

• The code clears background colors of all cells in the worksheet. If you have any colored cells, do not use this solution because your custom formatting will be lost.
• Executing this code blocksthe undo functionality on the sheet, and you won’t be able to undo an erroneous action by pressing Ctrl + Z .

Highlight active row and column without VBA

The best you can get to highlight the selected row and/or column without VBA is Excel’s conditional formatting. To set it up, carry out these steps:

1. Select your dataset in which the highlighting should be done.
2. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click New Rule.
3. In the New Formatting Rule dialog box, choose Use a formula to determine which cells to format.
4. In the Format values where this formula is true box, enter one of these formulas:

To highlight active row:

To highlight active column:

To highlight active row and column:

=OR(CELL(«row»)=ROW(), CELL(«col»)= COLUMN())

All the formulas make use of the CELL function to return the row/column number of the selected cell.

Click the Format button, switch to the Fill tab, and select the color you like.

Click OK twice to close both dialog windows.

If you feel like you need more detailed instructions, please see How to create formula-based conditional formatting rule.

For this example, we opted for the OR formula to shade both the column and row in the same color. That takes less work and is suitable for most cases.

Unfortunately, this solution is not as nice as the VBA one because it requires recalculating the sheet manually (by pressing the F9 key). By default, Excel recalculates a worksheet only after entering new data or editing the existing one, but not when the selection changes. So, you select another cell — nothing happens. Press F9 — the sheet is refreshed, the formula is recalculated, and the highlighting is updated.

To get the worksheet recalculated automatically whenever the SelectionChange event occurs, you can place this simple VBA code in the code module of your target sheet as explained in the previous example:

The code forces the selected range/cell to recalculate, which in turn forces the CELL function to update and the conditional formatting to reflect the change.

Advantages: unlike the previous method, this one does not impact the existing formatting you have applied manually.

Drawbacks: may worsen Excel’s performance.

• For the conditional formatting to work, you need to force Excel to recalculate the formula on every selection change (either manually with the F9 key or automatically with VBA). Forced recalculations may slow down your Excel. Since our code recalculates the selection rather than an entire sheet, a negative effect will most likely be noticeable only on really large and complex workbooks.
• Since the CELL function is available in Excel 2007 and higher, the method won’t work in earlier versions.

Highlight selected row and column using conditional formatting and VBA

In case the previous method slows down your workbook considerably, you can approach the task differently — instead of recalculating a worksheet on every user move, get the active row/column number with the help of VBA, and then serve that number to the ROW() or COLUMN() function by using conditional formatting formulas.

To accomplish this, here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Add a new blank sheet to your workbook and name it Helper Sheet. The only purpose of this sheet is to store two numbers representing the row and column containing a selected cell, so you can safely hide the sheet at a later point.
2. Insert the below VBA in the code window of the worksheet where you wish to implement highlighting. For the detailed instructions, please refer to our first example.

The above code places the coordinates of the active row and column to the sheet named «Helper Sheet». If you named your sheet differently in step 1, change the worksheet name in the code accordingly. The row number is written to A2 and the column number to B2.

In your target worksheet, select the entire dataset, and create a conditional formatting rule with the below formulas. The step-by-step guidance is provided in the above example.

And now, let’s cover the three main use cases in detail.

How to highlight active row

To highlight the row where your cursor is placed at the moment, set up a conditional formatting rule with this formula:

=ROW()=’Helper Sheet’!$A$2

As the result, the user can clearly see which row is currently selected:

How to highlight active column

To highlight the selected column, feed the column number to the COLUMN function using this formula:

=COLUMN()=’Helper Sheet’!$B$2

Now, a highlighted column lets you comfortably and effortlessly read vertical data focusing entirely on it.

How to highlight active row and column

To get both the selected row and column automatically shaded in the same color, combine the ROW() and COLUMN() functions into one formula:

=OR(ROW()=’Helper Sheet’!$A$2, COLUMN()=’Helper Sheet’!$B$2)

The relevant data is immediately brought into focus, so you can avoid misreading it.

Advantages: optimized performance; works in all Excel versions

Drawbacks: the longest setup

That’s how to highlight the column and row of a selected cell in Excel. I thank you for reading and look forward to seeing you on our blog next week!

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