Conditional Formatting: Adding Customized Rules to Excel 2007

Overview

One of the primary goals of the Excel 2007 team when they were planning updates to conditional
formatting was to make a greater number of scenarios possible without the need to write
formulas. Let me briefly explain what I mean. Excel 2003 gives you two choices when creating
conditional formats: you can either set up numerical comparisons (for example, this cell is
greater than a value, less than a value, equal to a value, etc.), or you can use a formula to specify
conditions. While formulas are powerful and flexible, they take more time to implement and
typically require a deeper knowledge of the product to set them up. For example, it can be
challenging to set up conditional formatting rules like "highlight the top 20% of this range."

When doing research, the team found that there were a set of very common things that users
wanted to do with conditional formatting, many of which required writing formulas, although not
all were obvious. Based on these findings, a number of new conditional formatting rules are
added in Excel 2007 to address the most common customer scenarios. These rules are broken
down into a few categories in the new user interface (UI) to make it easier to find the correct rule
type. Specifically, without writing formulas, you can conditionally format cells:

 With data bars, color scales, or icons based on the numeric value in the cell, percentages,
percentiles, or a formula. For more information on these features, see All About
Conditional Formatting in Excel 2007.

 With conditional operators such as "Containing," "Not Containing," "Beginning With," or

"Ending With" specific text. For example, "highlight parts containing certain characters
in a parts catalog."

 Containing dates that match dynamic conditions like "Yesterday," "Today," "Tomorrow,"
"In the Last 7 Days," "Last Week," "This Week," "Next Week," "Last Month," "This
Month," and "Next Month." For example, "highlight all items dated yesterday." A big
plus with these types of rules is that Excel 2007 handles calculating the date based on the
system clock, so you do not need to worry about updating the rules for conditions like
leap years.

 To test whether they are blank or not blank.

 To test whether they have errors or do not have errors.

 To see if the data is in the top n of a selected range (where n is some number) OR that the
data is in the top n percent of a selected range (again, where n is adjustable). For
example, "highlight the top 10 investment returns in a table of 1,000 investments."

 That have the bottom n values or cells that are the bottom n percent of a selected range.
  That are "Above Average," "Below Average," "Equal To or Above average," "Equal to or
Below average," 1 standard deviation above, 1 standard deviation below, 2 standard
deviations above, 2 standard deviations below, 3 standard deviations above, and 3
standard deviations below a selected range.

 That contain duplicate values or, conversely, cells that contain unique values.

 That are based on comparisons between two columns in tables. For example, "highlight
values where the values in the Actual Sales column are less than in the Sales Target
column." When working with tables, it is now easy to format the entire row based on the
results of a condition.

Other benefits of the changes to conditional formatting in Excel 2007 are the ability to specify
more than three conditions, to reorder conditions, and to have more than one condition resolve to
True.

An Improved User Interface

Let’s take a look at the more advanced conditional formatting UI and how it allows you to
address these and other conditions. First, let’s look at the Conditional Formatting Rules
Manager dialog box:

1. Start Excel 2007.

2. On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting and then click Manage Rules. The
Conditional Formatting Rules Manager is shown (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. The Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box

The Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box is the one-stop place to view and
manage all of the conditional format rules in a workbook. Using this dialog, you can:

 View the rule condition, see the range it is applied to, and the formatting applied by the
rule. The Show formatting rules for list at the top of the dialog box allows you to
change the scope of the rules. You can view rules for the selected cells, the current
worksheet, or other worksheets in the workbook.

 Add new rules with the New Rule button. (More on this shortly.)

 Change the order in which rules are evaluated. This is accomplished by using the up and
down arrow buttons.

 Edit existing rules with the Edit Rule button. The Edit Rule UI is the same as the New
Rule UI.
  Delete rules with the Delete Rule button.

 Control whether more than one rule can evaluate to True. (We'll discuss this in more
detail later in this column.)

When you press New Rule on the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box, or
when you select More Options from the conditional formatting gallery, you see the New
Formatting Rule dialog box (see Figure 2):

Figure 2. The New Formatting Rule dialog box

This dialog allows you to add new conditional formats to the selected range. Through this UI,
you can add all the conditional formats that are available through the Ribbon as well as a set of
additional, slightly more sophisticated conditional formats. In addition, you can change the
different settings and parameters on any conditional format rule. The conditional formatting
options are grouped into a few categories that are listed in the top of the New Formatting Rule
dialog box under Select a Rule Type. The bottom part of the dialog contains the Edit the Rule
Description section, which changes based on the rule type selected. Here is a summary of the
categories:

 Format all cells based on their values. Use this to create a data bar, 2-color or 3-color
color scale, or icon set rule.

 Format only cells that contain. Use this option to create the Excel 2003-style rules and
more (format cells greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, less than or equal to,
equal to, not equal to, between, not between). This is also the entry point to create rules
of type: specific text, date occurring, blanks, no blanks, errors, no errors.

 Format only top or bottom ranked values. Use this to create top n, top n%, bottom n,
bottom n% rule types.

 Format only values that are above or below average. Use this to create above, below,
equal or above, equal or below, 1 or 2 or 3 standard deviation above, or 1 or 2 or 3
standard deviation below rule types.

 Format only unique or duplicate values. Use this to create rules that format unique or
duplicate values.

 Use a formula to determine which cells to format. Use this to create Excel 2003-style
rules where you can enter a formula to determine whether a format should be applied.

Finally, as I touched on briefly in some of my previous columns, there are significant

improvements in the infrastructure of conditional formatting. For example, Excel 2007
introduces the following changes:
  Number of conditions on a range is no longer limited by number. In Excel 2003, you
could create conditional formatting rules with three conditions. In Excel 2007, you are no
longer limited by number; you are only limited by system memory.

 Multiple conditions evaluating to true. In Excel 2003, you could apply only one
conditional format to a given cell. If more than one conditional format evaluated to true,
then only the format associated with the first conditional format was applied.

Excel 2007 now allows you to have multiple conditional formats on a cell applied if more
than one condition evaluates to True. For example, assume you have one conditional
format that makes font style bold when true, and another that makes the cell background
color red when true. If both conditions are true, you see both formats applied (bold text
and red cell background color). When there are conflicts when applying rules, (for
example, apply red font AND green font), the first rule wins. You can trigger this effect
on or off for any rule by using the checkboxes on the Conditional Formatting Rules
Manager dialog box.

Controlling Rules Programmatically

In most scenarios, anything you can do in the UI, you can also do programmatically. The Excel
2007 object model supports all conditional formatting functionality that is supported in the UI.
This includes creating, editing, or deleting rules, as well as changing the priority of rules.

As those of you who have written conditional formatting by using Microsoft Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA) in previous versions of Excel are aware, the FormatConditions collection
is derived from the Range object. The following examples demonstrate how this new
functionality is exposed in the FormatConditions collection.

Creating a Rule

You can create the new conditional formatting features introduced in Excel 2007 (Databars,
Color Scales, Icon Sets, Top n) using the Add method in the FormatConditions collection. For
example, to add a Databar object, use: