Using or conditional formatting excel

Conditional Formatting in Excel provides a great way to highlight certain cells that may be more important than others.

When combined with the OR criterion, you get added flexibility to your formatting condition options.

In this tutorial, we will see how to use conditional formatting, specifically with the OR criteria.

Conditional formatting allows you to apply particular formatting to only those cells that satisfy the given criteria.

Most often it is to apply color-based formatting to highlight, emphasize, or differentiate among data and information stored in a spreadsheet.

The great thing about conditional formatting is that it lets you specify the condition or criteria for formatting in a multitude of ways. You can use it to format:

• Cells that contain duplicate or unique values
• Cells that contain a particular value
• Cells that contain a particular range of values
• Cells that return true for a particular formula

…and more.

In this tutorial, we will be applying conditional formatting using a formula. This means that Excel will decide which cells to format based on the result of a formula.

What are Logical Functions in Excel?

Logical functions like OR, AND and NOT let you carry out more than one comparison, or test multiple conditions. The function returns a logical value based on the set of conditions, which can be either TRUE or FALSE.

The OR function returns a TRUE if any of the conditions operated on is TRUE. So, you can have an OR function with the following syntax:

=OR(condition1,condition2,[condition3],..)

where condition1, condition2, etc. are conditions with comparison operators like =, <, <=, >, or <=. The OR function will return TRUE even if one of the conditions is true.

Example to Explain How to Use Conditional Formatting with OR Criteria

Now let us see how to combine the two concepts discussed – Conditional Formatting with OR Criteria. To explain this, we will use a sample problem.

Using Conditional Formatting with OR Criteria

When you include an OR function in a conditional formatting rule, you can highlight cells in the table that satisfy at least one of the conditions defined in the OR function.

Let us say you have a set of Employee Names, Departments, and Sales values as shown in the screenshot below:

If you want to highlight all the rows where an employee is from department B or has Sales of more than $5000, you can use Conditional Formatting with OR criteria as follows:

1. Select all the cells where you want to apply cell formatting. In our case, we select the range A2:C7.
2. Under the Home tab, click on the Conditional Formatting button (in the Styles group).
3. This will display a drop-down menu with different conditional formatting options. Select ‘New Rule’.
4. This will open the ‘New Formatting Rule’ dialog box.
5. From the options under ‘Select a Rule Type’, click on the option ‘Use a formula to determine which cells to format’.
6. This will open a new section below to edit the rule description. In the input box below ‘Format values where this formula is true’, type the formula: =OR($B2=”B”,$C2>5000)
7. Next, you need to specify what formatting you want to apply to the row if its values return TRUE for the above formula. Click on the Format button.
8. This will open the ‘Format Cells’ dialog box from where you can apply whatever formatting you want to apply to the selected rows.
9. We just want to highlight the rows with a yellow fill color, so we can select the ‘Fill’ tab and select the Yellow color from the Background color options shown.
10. Click OK to close the Format Cells dialog box.
11. Click OK again to close the New Formatting Rule dialog box.
12. All the rows that satisfy the condition (have either the department as B or Sales more than $5000) will be highlighted with a yellow background color.

You can apply this method with as many conditions and as many types of conditions as you need to. You can also follow the same technique with other comparison functions like AND and NOT.

In this tutorial, I showed you step by step how to use conditional formatting with OR criteria to highlight data in a table if at least one of the given conditions is met.

I hope you can use the method explained in this tutorial for your own data and applications, to get your required formatting results.

Other Excel tutorials you may also like:

• How to Find Duplicates in Excel (Conditional Formatting/ Count If/ Filter)
• How to Highlight Every Other Row in Excel (Conditional Formatting & VBA)
• Highlight Cell If Value Exists in Another Column in Excel
• How to Hide Rows based on Cell Value in Excel (2 Easy Methods)
• How to Copy Formatting In Excel (4 Easy Ways)

Let’s take a look at the current example. You are traveling the world and there is a list of expenses you made. Each expense is divided into categories. You want to highlight only two categories: Entertainment and Food. One of the few ways you can do it is to use a formula in a conditional formatting rule.

1. Highlight cells from C2 to C9 to choose all
   dates in the category header.
2. Navigate to Home
   >> Styles >> Conditional Formatting >> New Rule.
3. Click “Use formula to determine which cells
   to format”.
4. Inside “Format values where this formula is
   true”, type this formula: =OR(c2=”food”,c2=”entertainment”)

When you compare values using the comparison operator, you
don’t have to pay attention to capitalization.

1. Click the Format button.
2. From a new window, click the Fill tab and choose a color. Click OK to confirm.
3. Click OK to apply the new rule.

The table is formatted and the “Food” and “Entertainment” categories are highlighted.

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Conditional Formatting is one of the most simple yet powerful features in Excel Spreadsheets.

As the name suggests, you can use conditional formatting in Excel when you want to highlight cells that meet a specified condition.

It gives you the ability to quickly add a visual analysis layer over your data set. You can create heat maps, show increasing/decreasing icons, Harvey bubbles, and a lot more using conditional formatting in Excel.

Using Conditional Formatting in Excel (Examples)

In this tutorial, I’ll show you seven amazing examples of using conditional formatting in Excel:

• Quickly Identify Duplicates using Conditional Formatting in Excel.
• Highlight Cells with Value Greater/Less than a Number in a Dataset.
• Highlighting Top/Bottom 10 (or 10%) values in a Dataset.
• Highlighting Errors/Blanks using Conditional Formatting in Excel.
• Creating Heat Maps using Conditional Formatting in Excel.
• Highlight Every Nth Row/Column using Conditional Formatting.
• Search and Highlight using Conditional Formatting in Excel.

1. Quickly Identify Duplicates

Conditional formatting in Excel can be used to identify duplicates in a dataset.

Here is how you can do this:

This would instantly highlight all the cells that have a duplicate in the selected data set. Your dataset can be in a single column, multiple columns, or in a non-contiguous range of cells.

See Also: The Ultimate Guide to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel.

2. Highlight Cells with Value Greater/Less than a Number

You can use conditional formatting in Excel to quickly highlight cells that contain values greater/less than a specified value. For example, highlighting all cells with sales value less than 100 million, or highlighting cells with marks less than the passing threshold.

Here are the steps to do this:

This would instantly highlight all the cells with values greater than 5 in a dataset.Note: If you wish to highlight values greater than equal to 5, you should apply conditional formatting again with the criteria “Equal To”.

The same process can be followed to highlight cells with a value less than a specified values.

3. Highlighting Top/Bottom 10 (or 10%)

Conditional formatting in Excel can quickly identify top 10 items or top 10% from a data set. This could be helpful in situations where you want to quickly see the top candidates by scores or top deal values in the sales data.

Similarly, you can also quickly identify the bottom 10 items or bottom 10% in a dataset.

Here are the steps to do this:

This would instantly highlight the top 10 items in the selected dataset. Note that this works only for cells that have a numeric value in it.

Also, if you have less than 10 cells in the dataset, and you select the options to highlight Top 10 items/Bottom 10 Items, then all the cells would get highlighted.

Here are some examples of how the conditional formatting would work:

4. Highlighting Errors/Blanks

If you work with a lot of numerical data and calculations in Excel, you’d know the importance of identifying and treating cells that have errors or are blank. If these cells are used in further calculations, it could lead to erroneous results.

Conditional Formatting in Excel can help you quickly identify and highlight cells that have errors or are blank.

Suppose we have a dataset as shown below:

This data set has a blank cell (A4) and errors (A5 and A6).

Here are steps to highlight the cells that are empty or have errors in it:

This would instantly highlight all the cells that are either blank or have errors in it.

Note: You don’t need to use the entire range A1:A7 in the formula in conditional formatting. The above-mentioned formula only uses A1. When you apply this formula to the entire range, excel checks one cell at a time and adjusts the reference. For example, when it checks A1, it uses the formula =OR(ISBLANK(A1),ISERROR(A1)). When it checks cell A2, it then uses the formula =OR(ISBLANK(A2),ISERROR(A2)). It automatically adjusts the reference (as these are relative references) depending on which cell is being analyzed. So you need not write a separate formula for each cell. Excel is smart enough to change the cell reference all by itself 🙂

See Also: Using IFERROR and ISERROR to handle errors in excel.

5. Creating Heat Maps

A heat map is a visual representation of data where the color represents the value in a cell. For example, you can create a heat map where a cell with the highest value is colored green and there is a shift towards red color as the value decreases. 

Something as shown below:

The above data set has values between 1 and 100. Cells are highlighted based on the value in it. 100 gets the green color, 1 gets the red color.

Here are the steps to create heat maps using conditional formatting in Excel.

• Select the data set.
• Go to Home –> Conditional Formatting –> Color Scales, and choose one of the color schemes.

As soon as you click on the heatmap icon, it would apply the formatting to the dataset. There are multiple color gradients that you can choose from. If you are not satisfied with the existing color options, you can select more rules and specify the color that you want.

Note: In a similar way, you can also apply Data Bard and Icon sets.

6. Highlight Every Other Row/Column

You may want to highlight alternate rows to increase the readability of the data.

These are called the zebra lines and could be especially helpful if you are printing the data.

Now there are two ways to create these zebra lines. The fastest way is to convert your tabular data into an Excel Table. It automatically applied a color to alternate rows. You can read more about it here.

Another way is using conditional formatting.

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below:

Here are the steps to highlight alternate rows using conditional formatting in Excel.

That’s it! The alternate rows in the data set will get highlighted.

You can use the same technique in many cases. All you need to do is use the relevant formula in the conditional formatting. Here are some examples:

• Highlight alternate even rows: =ISEVEN(ROW())
• Highlight alternate add rows: =ISODD(ROW())
• Highlight every 3rd row: =MOD(ROW(),3)=0

7. Search and Highlight Data using Conditional Formatting

This one is a bit advanced use of conditional formatting. It would make you look like an Excel rockstar.

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below, with Products Name, Sales Rep, and Geography. The idea is to type a string in cell C2, and if it matches with the data in any cell(s), then that should get highlighted. Something as shown below:

Here are the steps to create this Search and Highlight functionality:

That’s it! Now when you enter anything in cell C2 and hit enter, it will highlight all the matching cells.

How does this work?

The formula used in conditional formatting evaluates all the cells in the dataset. Let’s say you enter Japan in cell C2. Now Excel would evaluate the formula for each cell.

The formula would return TRUE for a cell when two conditions are met:

• Cell C2 is not empty.
• The content of cell C2 exactly matches the content of the cell in the dataset.

Hence, all the cells that contain the text Japan get highlighted.

Download the Example File

You can use the same logic, to create variations such as:

• Highlight the entire row instead of a cell.
• Highlight even when there is a partial match.
• Highlight the cells/rows as you type (dynamic) [You are going to love this trick :)].

How to Remove Conditional Formatting in Excel

Once applied, conditional formatting remains in place unless you remove it manually. As a best practice, keep the conditional formatting applied only to those cells where you need it.

Since it’s volatile, it may lead to a slow Excel workbook.

To remove conditional formatting:

• Select the cells from which you want to remove conditional formatting.
• Go to Home –> Conditional Formatting –> Clear Rules –> Clear Rules from Selected Cells.
  • If you want to remove conditional formatting from the entire worksheet, select Clear Rules from Entire Sheet.

Important things to know about Conditional Formatting in Excel

• Conditional formatting in volatile. It can lead to a slow workbook. Use it only when needed.
• When you copy paste cells that contain conditional formatting, conditional formatting also gets copied.
• If you apply multiple rules on the same set of cells, all rules remain active. In the case of any overlap, the rule applied last is given preference. You can, however, change the order by changing the order from the Manage Rules dialogue box.

You May Also Like the Following Excel Tutorials:

• The Right Way to Apply Conditional Formatting in Pivot Table
• Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel
• The Ultimate Guide to Using Conditional Formatting in Google Sheets
• How to Highlight Weekend Dates in Excel?

Spreadsheets are the go-to information hub for individuals, teams, and organizations of all sizes to store data. However, large data sets can make it difficult to identify trends, pick out key pieces of information, and track deadlines. Luckily, Microsoft Excel has a feature called conditional formatting that alleviates some of these challenges. 

Conditional formatting enables you to apply special formatting to cells in your spreadsheet that meet certain criteria. Excel has a sizable library of preset conditions that you can apply fairly simply, or you can create your own conditional formatting rules using Excel formulas. This guide will provide in-depth step-by-step examples of the most popular conditional formatting functions for basic and advanced users in Excel 2016. Then, we’ll show you how to perform the same functions in another spreadsheet application, Smartsheet.

Highlight Cells Rules | Clear Rules | Top/Bottom | Conditional Formatting with Formulas

Conditional formatting in Excel enables you to highlight cells with a certain color, depending on the cell’s value.

Highlight Cells Rules

To highlight cells that are greater than a value, execute the following steps.

1. Select the range A1:A10.

2. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting.

3. Click Highlight Cells Rules, Greater Than.

4. Enter the value 80 and select a formatting style.

5. Click OK.

Result. Excel highlights the cells that are greater than 80.

6. Change the value of cell A1 to 81.

Result. Excel changes the format of cell A1 automatically.

Note: you can also use this category (see step 3) to highlight cells that are less than a value, between two values, equal to a value, cells that contain specific text, dates (today, last week, next month, etc.), duplicates or unique values.

Clear Rules

To clear a conditional formatting rule, execute the following steps.

1. Select the range A1:A10.

2. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting.

3. Click Clear Rules, Clear Rules from Selected Cells.

Top/Bottom

To highlight cells that are above average, execute the following steps.

1. Select the range A1:A10.

2. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting.

3. Click Top/Bottom Rules, Above Average.

4. Select a formatting style.

5. Click OK.

Result. Excel calculates the average (42.5) and formats the cells that are above this average.

Note: you can also use this category (see step 3) to highlight the top n items, the top n percent, the bottom n items, the bottom n percent or cells that are below average.

Conditional Formatting with Formulas

Take your Excel skills to the next level and use a formula to determine which cells to format. Formulas that apply conditional formatting must evaluate to TRUE or FALSE.

1. Select the range A1:E5.

2. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting.

3. Click New Rule.

4. Select ‘Use a formula to determine which cells to format’.

5. Enter the formula =ISODD(A1)

6. Select a formatting style and click OK.

Result. Excel highlights all odd numbers.

Explanation: always write the formula for the upper-left cell in the selected range. Excel automatically copies the formula to the other cells. Thus, cell A2 contains the formula =ISODD(A2), cell A3 contains the formula =ISODD(A3), etc.

Here’s another example.

7. Select the range A2:D7.

8. Repeat steps 2-4 above.

9. Enter the formula =$C2=»USA»

10. Select a formatting style and click OK.

Result. Excel highlights all USA orders.

Explanation: we fixed the reference to column C by placing a $ symbol in front of the column letter ($C2). As a result, cell B2, C2 and cell D2 also contain the formula =$C2=»USA», cell A3, B3, C3 and D3 contain the formula =$C3=»USA», etc.

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)

What is Conditional Formatting?

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 conditional formatting options and controls than Excel (for example, no data bars or icon sets). The focus of this article will be on how to use conditional formatting in Excel, but many of the techniques will apply just as readily to Google Sheets.

Here are a few things you can do with the built-in options in Excel:

1. How to Highlight Duplicates

Select your range of cells, then go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicates.

After viewing the duplicates, you can decide whether you need to remove them manually or use the built-in tool via Data > Data Tools > Remove Duplicates.

Highlighting duplicates in Google Sheets requires using a custom formula rule such as =COUNTIF(A:A,A1)>1 to highlight the duplicates in column A.

2. How to add Color Scales

Select your range of cells, then go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Color Scales and pick the color range that makes sense (usually, green=good and red=bad).

Color Scales are very useful for seeing high and low values within a large data set. Color Scales can also be used to create heat maps, like this Calendar Heat Map Chart:

3. How to add Data Bars in Excel

Select your range of cells, then go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Data Bars and select the style you want.

Data Bars let you create horizontal bar charts and progress bars directly within a group of cells. In the example on the right, I’m using data bars to show a histogram of class grades.

The default settings for Data Bars scale the bars automatically based on the values in the Applies To range. You can control the scale used for the bars by editing the rule’s settings. I’ll be showing a couple examples of that later in this article.

4. How to Highlight Overdue Dates

To highlight overdue dates:

1. Select the range of dates and go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Less Than…
2. Enter =TODAY()+30 to highlight dates earlier than 30 days from now. Enter =TODAY() to highlight dates earlier than today.
3. Choose a format option from the drop-down box, then click on OK.

Examples of this technique can be found in the Equipment Calibration Log and To Do List templates.

5. How to Add Icon Sets in Excel

To add Icon Sets, select your data and then go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Icon Sets > and choose one of the options. You will amost always have to customize the settings for Icon Sets.

This example, based on the Checkbook Register Template, uses a green circle icon (⬤) to show when an account balance is >=$500, yellow/orange (⬤) when it is less than $500, and red (⬤) when the balance is negative.

After selecting the icon set from the built-in menu, you need to edit the rule to define these different values. To do that, select one of the cells in the Balance column, go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Rules Manager and click on Edit Rule. The image below shows the settings used in this example:

TIP: One of the best ways to learn how Icon Sets work is to play with all of the different drop-down options in the rule settings.

For examples of other Icon Sets, check out the Feature Comparison Template:

How to View/Edit Conditional Formatting Rules

Vertex42 has many templates that use both simple and advanced conditional formatting techniques. If you are using a template and want to figure out how the conditional formatting works, or want to delete or change rules, you will need to know a couple of things:

1) To view the rules for selected cells, go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Rules Manager

2) To view ALL the rules in the entire worksheet, select «This Worksheet» from the drop-down at the top of the Rules Manager window.

The image above shows the 5 rules used in the Task Checklist Template. The first rule changes tasks to gray strike-through when the Done column has a check mark. The next 3 rules highlight specific text in the Priority column. The last rule adds a Progress Bar in the % Complete column.

I will be using this template to demonstrate some techniques and key facts about conditional formatting, so I would recommend that you download it and experiment with it as you continue to read.

Rule Order Matters

The Task Checklist Template mentioned above demonstrates two key points about rule order or heirarchy.

Here is the list of rules again:

Key Point #2 means that if the first rule has already changed the font color to gray, the following rules cannot change the font color to green, yellow, or red. It’s first come, first serve.

In Excel, the font color and fill color (and border, and font style, and …) can be affected independently by different rules. This means that you can have one rule that changes a font to gray, a different rule that changes the cell color to red, and a different rule that adds a data bar.

Why do I need to check the Stop-If-True box?

With the Stop-If-True box checked, none of the following rules will be evaluated if the condition of that first rule is met.

That is why the first task row doesn’t show a Data Bar in the %Complete column and why the Priority «HIGH» is not highlighted red.

What would happen if I didn’t check the Stop-If-True box? Go ahead and try it … or look at the next image.

Result when Stop-if-True is Not Checked

Notice how the red fill color is applied to the HIGH cell. The first rule does not define a fill color, but it does change the font color. That means that the 4th rule can change the fill color to light red, but it can’t override the font color.

Excel vs. Google Sheets: In Excel, the Number Format, Font Color, Font Style, Font Underline, Font Effects, Fill Color, Fill Effects, Border Color, Border Style, Data Bars, and Icon Sets can be affected independently by different rules. That isn’t the case in Google Sheets. In Google Sheets, conditional formatting behaves as though all rules are Stop-If-True. Excel is much more flexible and powerful in that respect.

How to Create an In-Cell Progress Bar

You’ve already seen how to add a Data Bar, so using a Data Bar for showing progress based on a percentage is as simple as making a few changes to the Data Bar settings.

To see how it works in the Task Checklist template, go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules, click on the Data Bar rule, then click on the Edit Rule button.

The progress should be a value between 0% and 100%. When you create a progress bar, you need to change the Minimum value to Type:Number & Value:0, and change the Maximum to Type:Number & Value:1.

NOTE Google Sheets currently doesn’t provide an in-cell data bar option. But, you can mimic the effect using the formula =REPT(«█»,ROUND(percent*10,0)).

I’ve attempted to figure out a way to change the color of the data bars conditionally, but the best I’ve been able to come up with instead is to use a 3-color scale in addition to a gray data bar. This can help if you want to use the color to signal an incomplete task.

How to Highlight Every Other Row Using a Formula

Highlighting every other row can help make tables more readable like in the expense tracking example. To do this in Excel (without needing the Tables feature), you can create a formula-based conditional formatting rule.

1. Select the cells you want to format (except the header).
2. Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule.
3. Select «Use a formula to determine which cells to format.»
4. Enter the formula =MOD(ROW(),2)=0.
5. Click on Format then select a color in the Fill tab.

Likewise, to highlight every other column, you could use the formula =MOD(COLUMN(),2)=0.

This technique allows you to insert and copy/paste rows without having to update the background colors manually, but it has one major drawback: conditional formatting overrides manual formatting.

Key Point: Conditional formatting overrides manual formatting.

This means that if you want to change the fill color of a cell in your table, but the conditional formatting rule is already changing the fill color, you won’t see the change that you are making. You ARE editing the fill color, but you won’t see the change because conditional formatting is overriding your format.

If you want to manually change the fill colors in your table AND highlight every other row, you may need to use the Format as a Table feature in Excel.

NOTE Google Sheets has a feature listed right underneath Conditional Formatting called Alternate Colors. This works separate from conditional formatting and DOES NOT override custom formatting! I LOVE that!

Conditional Formatting Based on Another Cell

To change the format of a cell based on another cell, or based on a range of cells, use a formula rule to determine which cells to format. Formulas can be simple or very complex. You can use most of the standard spreadsheet functions such as IF(), AND(), MATCH(), SEARCH(), COUNTIF(), SUMIF(), etc.

How to Create a Formula Rule

To create a formula rule, select «Use a formula to determine which cells to format» after clicking on New Rule from the Conditional Formatting menu or from within the Rule Manager.

A formula rule is activated when the formula returns TRUE.

For example, =G27<TODAY() will apply the format when the date in cell G27 is overdue (less than today’s date).

To format based on multiple conditions, use the AND() function in your formula. For example, =AND(A1>10,A1<20) will apply a format when cell A1 is between 10 and 20.

Formula Rules can be very tricky! When using relative references (references without dollar signs in front of the column letter or row number), you need to write your formula based on the top-left cell in the Applies To range. When you are creating the rule for the first time, write your formula based on the top-left cell that you have selected.

IMPORTANT: Always write the formula based on the top-left cell in the Applies To range!

How to Highlight an Entire Row

The Work Breakdown Structure template shows an example of highlighting an entire row when the value in the Level column is equal to 1.

The formula we are using is =($B6=1), and this applies to all the cells in the range $B$6:$G$30. One formula to rule them all! But how does it work?

Behind the scenes, Excel is essentially copying this formula to each of the cells in the Applies To range. When a formula is copied, relative references (no dollar sign) will change. This means that for cell C15, the formula would become =($B15=1). Column B stays the same (because of the dollar sign in front of the B), but the row changes.

Key Point: In Conditional Formatting Rules, absolute references stay the same ($B$1) and relative references (A1) change as Excel applies the formula to each cell in the Applies To range.

If you aren’t familiar with how absolute and relative references work, you may want to learn more about that. It’s absolutely critical for understanding formula-based conditional formatting.

How to Highlight Cells Based on a Range

You can use the MATCH() function within a conditional formatting formula rule to highlight cells whose values are found in another range or list.

For example, in the Yearly Event Calendar, dates are highlighted in the calendar if the date is found in the list of holidays, as shown in the image below.

The formula is =MATCH(this_date,date_range,0) where this_date is A10 (a relative reference to the top-left cell in the Applies To range), and date_range is $Y$9:$Y$300 (an absolute reference to the list of holidays in column Y).

The MATCH formula only returns TRUE if it finds this_date within date_range. (See VLOOKUP and INDEX-MATCH Examples to learn about lookup formulas).

How to Highlight Values NOT in a Range

In some spreadsheets, I use conditional formatting to highlight values that are NOT within another range. Along with Data Validation, this can help with error checking.

The formula for the rule is =ISERROR(MATCH(this_cell,other_range,0)). This returns TRUE when MATCH does not find this_cell within other_range.

I’ve used this technique in my original Money Management Template to verify budget categories.

How to Use Conditional Formatting to Create a Gantt Chart

Watch the new Video Series: How to Make a Gantt Chart in Excel!

Most of my Gantt Chart Templates use a combination of many conditional formatting rules. The example below (from the Simple Gantt Chart) demonstrates (1) how to create the bars that show the date range for each task and (2) how to show the current date using a red border.

Rule 1 uses the formula =AND(task_end>=G$5,task_start<G$5+1) where task_end is a relative named range defined as $D7 and task_start is a relative named range defined as $C7. Using named ranges isn’t necessary. The formula could be written as =AND($D7>=G$5,$C7<G$5+1)

Rule 2 can use the same formula, with today’s date in place of both task_end and task_start. Or, the rule could be as simple as =G$5=TODAY().

The proper use of absolute and relative ranges is absolutely critical here. So, pay special attention to the placement of the dollar signs.

Note You may notice that row 7 is hidden in the screenshot. The reason for hiding the first row of the gantt chart is so that if a person inserts a row above row 8, it will use the formatting from row 7 rather than the formatting from row 6.

Using a «No-Format Stop» Rule

In some of my Gantt charts, such as the Construction Schedule, the user can pick the color of each bar. Each different color requires a separate conditional formatting rule.

One way to do this would be to add the color condition to each rule like this: =AND($D7=»red»,task_end>=G$5,task_start<G$5+1).

However, I often prefer to use what I call a «No-Format Stop» Rule. Instead of saying where you want the color to be applied, this rule defines where the color should NOT be, and stops if true.

This No-Format Stop rule can be as simple as adding NOT() around the main gantt chart rule like this =NOT(AND(task_end>=G$5,task_start<G$5+1)). It’s called a «No-Format» rule because no formatting is applied. Its only purpose is to prevent the rules that come after it from being applied.

The following rules then need to only check for what color to assign. In the example, the color is entered in column D. When cell D7 is blank, the bar will be gray. When D7=»B», the bar will be blue … and so on.

Use Data Bars to Compare Two Groups

Charts like the population example below are popular for comparing two different groups.

The trick to creating a chart like this with Data Bars is to use two different columns. The settings for the Male column use the «Right-to-Left» direction as shown in the image below.

!!! The column widths and the Min/Max values need to be identical for both columns of data, or the visual display will misrepresent the numbers. In this case, the Minimum is 0 and the Maximum is 25 for both the blue data bars and the red data bars.

You could argue that this type of graph is not ideal for making exact comparisons between the Male and Female population. For example, if the numbers weren’t included in the chart, could you tell that for Age 40 to 49 there were more females (20.48 vs. 20.14)? No, you couldn’t. The bars look like they are the same length.

Our brains make better length comparisons when two things are aligned and parallel. The next chart uses Data Bars arranged a little differently. Now you CAN see the difference between the Male and Female population.

Control Scaling by Linking Min/Max to Cells

A great solution for controlling the scaling for Data Bars and Color Scales is to link the Minimum and Maximum values to cells that you can edit. Using this approach, you can have different rules using the same Min/Max values. Here’s an example:

To do this, edit the rule settings with cell references like this:

The green data bar and blue data bars in this example are separate rules, but both rules use Min/Max values linked to cells C139 and D139.

Change Number Formats via Conditional Formatting

Some tricks I like to use in my templates involve changing the custom number format via conditional formatting based on user-selected options. If you aren’t already familiar with how to create custom number formats, I would encourage you to read the article Custom Number Formats in Excel.

Suffice it to say for now that you assign custom number formats by going to the Number tab when editing the Format for a conditional formatting rule.

Change Date Formats to d/m/yyyy

If you are sharing a file with people from different countries, you may want a simple way to switch the display of dates from m/d/y to d/m/y. I use this technique in Gantt Chart Template Pro.

The date in cell F131 displays a date as m/d/yyyy by default, but when the user selects «dmy» in cell D131, the CF rule changes the format to d/m/yyyy.

You could set up similar options to switch time formats between standard and 24-hour time, or change the display of numbers from decimal to fractions.

Note Developers: To avoid having to switch between date formats, use the built-in date formats marked with the asterisk (*) when you can. From Excel: «Date formats that begin with an asterisk (*) respond to changes in regional date and time settings that are specified for the operating system.»

Hide Zero Values

This example shows 3 different ways to hide zero values using conditional formatting.

• The 2nd column hides the zero values by changing the font color to white.
• The 3rd column changes the custom number format to » — «.
• The 3rd column changes the custom number format to » «.

I personally prefer replacing zeros with a dash because otherwise the cell looks blank, and cells that look blank tend to be deleted or overwritten because you think they are empty.

Automatic Indenting

A custom number format will allow you to add text characters before or after the number, so you can simulate indenting by adding a number of spaces before your text using the format code » «@.

I use this technique in both the free Work Breakdown Structure template, and the premium Gantt Chart Template.

In this example, the formula is counting the number of decimal points in the WBS number. One rule adds 3 spaces before the text if it finds 1 decimal point. A second rule adds 6 spaces before the text if it finds 2 decimal points. See the article Text Manipulation Formulas to learn how this formula counts decimal places.

Display 23K, 23M, or 23B Based on the Value

Displaying large numbers as thousands, millions, or billions is VERY common, but how do you automatically display «K» or «M» or «B» depending on the value of the number? Using 3 different CF rules with the custom format codes 0.0K, 0.0M, and 0.0B.

Display Custom Icons

Excel has a limited number of icons available for Icon Sets. However, if you use unicode symbols and emojis, you can create your own icons using multiple CF rules. The format codes in this example are simply 0* X where X is the unicode character. To place the icon on the left with the number on the right, you could use X* 0.00 instead.

Check out the Moon Phase Calendar to see how it uses conditional formatting to replace dates in a calendar with moon phase unicode characters.

How to Copy Conditional Formatting

The simple answer is that unless you tell Excel or Google Sheets NOT to, conditional formatting will be copied whenever other formatting is copied. For example, when you copy/paste cells, when you use the format painter tool, and when you insert rows and columns.

Copying conditional formatting may not always behave the way you expect it to. Sometimes that may not matter, but in other cases it may cause significant errors in how the data is interpreted. So, it’s always a good idea to check your conditional formatting rules after copying/pasting.

One of the main problems I’ve seen occurs when copying a row and inserting the copied row. Rules may be split, resulting in separate rules for different ranges when you expect there to be only one rule for the entire range. This can cause problems with color scales and data bars, especially.

To avoid the problem of splitting CF rules, when pasting you can use Paste Special and choose the «All Merging Conditional Formats» option.

Conditional Formatting is Volatile

If you use a lot of conditional formatting in your worksheet, or the rules involve inefficient formulas, you may notice Excel appear to slow down. That is because Conditional Formatting is volatile — meaning that the rules are evaluated every time the display refreshes.

To experiment with this concept, I built the following example. The fire in the display will flicker every time rules are evaluated, allowing you to test actions that cause the display to refresh.

Download the Example File (VolatileCF.xlsx)

Wrap Up and Final Tips

If you like this article, or use some of these ideas, please share the link to this article via your website and social media!

I didn’t talk about all the possible uses for conditional formatting, and not even some of the most common uses, such as making negative values red and highlighting based on specific text values. That is partly because many of these techniques are extremely easy to implement using the built-in options.

If you have questions, please go ahead and submit a comment below.

If you’d like to try some geeky fun, check out the Mine Blaster 1000 game. It makes use of multiple overlapping conditional formatting rules to create a game something roughly like Minesweeper (without any VBA).