CONDITIONAL FORMATTING

IN EXCEL
 Introduction
 Conditional formatting is used to change the appearance of cells in a
range based on your specified conditions. Changing the appearance
of cells can visually highlight interesting data points for analysis. It
can help you highlight the most important information in your
spreadsheets and spot variances of cell values with a quick glance.
 Excel Conditional Formatting is used to apply certain formatting to
data that meets one or more conditions. Just like usual cell formatting,
it lets you highlight and differentiate your data in various ways by
changing cells' fill color, font color, border styles, etc. The difference
is that it is more flexible and dynamic - when the data changes,
conditional formats get updated automatically to reflect the changes.
 Features of conditional formatting

 Excel enables several features of conditional formatting, such as -

 You can highlight the cells with a background color to make the data more valuable.
 You can also format the cell content with a special font.
 It also allows you to format the cells and their data, which meet the specified criteria.
 Excel allows to put conditions on data and format the cells based on following conditions, like greater
than, less than, duplicate values, unique values, equal, if text containing specified data.
 You can set the rules to format the data and also clear the rules set by you either from selected cells or the
entire sheet earlier.
 Conditional formatting enables you to do a number of things with data, like you can set the icons with the
 Where to find conditional formatting
option?
 On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting.
 Where to find conditional formatting
option?
So, here's how you use Excel
conditional formatting:
 In your spreadsheet, select

the cells you want to format.

 On the Home tab, in
the Styles group,
click Conditional Formatting.
 From a set of inbuilt rules,

choose the one that suits

your purpose.
As an example, we are going
to highlight values less than
0
 Inbuilt rules in conditional formatting
 Excel has some built-in conditional formatting rules and styles. They are as follows:

 1. Highlight Cells Rules. You can conditionally highlight your data range by choosing
one of the options from the Highlight Cells Rules menu, or you can create more rules to
apply. This menu has some preset conditional formatting rules set and formatting types to
apply:
 You need to choose one of the preset rules and formatting types to apply conditional
formatting.
 • Greater Than – Highlight cells that are greater than a value you set.
 • Less Than – Highlight cells that are less than a value you set.
 Inbuilt rules in conditional formatting
 Between – Highlight cells that have values between values you set.
 Equal To – Highlight cells that are exactly equal to a value you set.
 Text that Contains – Highlight cells that contain strings of text.
 A Date Occurring – Highlight cells based upon the date in a cell.
 Duplicate Values – Highlight cells which contain duplicate data values.

 For example, if you want to highlight cells that are greater than a value you set of 20,000
in a selected data range, then you will choose Greater Than rule option and will enter
20,000 in a popup window and will choose a formatting type from the drop-down list.
 Inbuilt rules in conditional formatting
 2. Top/Bottom rules- When we select the Top/Bottom Rules from the Conditional
Formatting menu, the Top Bottom secondary window appears. Excel Top/Bottom
Conditional Formatting further offers 6 different built-in options to easily highlight the
cell(s). they are

 Top 10 Items- To highlight the cells with one of the colour options based on the cell value
that satisfies the criteria of top values in the selected range.
 Top 10% items- To highlight the cells with one of the colour options based on the cell value
that satisfies the criteria of top percent of values in the selected range.
 Inbuilt rules in conditional formatting

 Bottom 10 Items- To highlight the cells with one of the colour options based on the cell
value that satisfies the criteria of bottom values in the selected range.
 Bottom 10%- To highlight the cells with one of the colour option based on the cell value
that satisfies the bottom percent of values in the selected range.
 Above Average- To highlight the cells if the cell value is above the average value in the
selected range.
 Below Average- To highlight the cells if the cell value is below the average value in the
selected range.
 Inbuilt rules in conditional formatting
 3. Data bars – Excel Data Bars feature are a type of conditional formatting options that
combines Data and Bar Chart inside the cell. Data bars in Excel make it very easy to
visualize values in a range of cells.
 A longer bar represents a higher value. By default, the cell that holds the minimum value
(0 if there are no negative values) has no data bar and the cell that holds the maximum
value has a data bar that fills the entire cell. All other cells are filled proportionally.
 In other words, the higher the cell value, the larger the data bar line, and the smaller the
cell value, the smaller the data bar's size. This way, the user can easily visualize the
numeric data values even if they can distinguish the negative numbers in no time
because the bars for negative number are drawn away from the axis.
 Inbuilt rules in conditional formatting
 4. Color Scale- The Color Scales in Excel are a part of conditional formatting used to highlight
cells with different colors. The color scales option is applied to the respective cells according to
the value in the cell specified. i.e., a dark color is applied if the cell value is higher, whereas a
low light color is applied if the value in the cell is less. The selected cells are colored with
gradations of two color shades or three-color shades that fit minimum, midpoint, and maximum
thresholds. These conditional formats color shades make it quicker to simultaneously compare
the values of a range of cells. It contains 6 two-color scales and 6 three-color scales options.

 5. Icon sets- The Icon sets show changes in your data. They include arrows, flags, bars, and
other shapes to represent the change in your data.
 Clear conditional Formatting
 Clear conditional formatting

 In Excel, the users can clear all formatting applied to the cells in an Excel spreadsheet at once. Excel
allows to clear the conditional formatting either from the entire worksheet or the selected cells
(certain cells).

 1. Clear formatting from entire worksheet

 In the Home tab, go to Conditional formatting > Clear Rules > Clear Rules from Entire Worksheet.

 It will clear all the pre-set and custom condition rules from the entire worksheet.
 Clear conditional Formatting
 Steps

Step 1: Select all cells to clear the formatting from an entire worksheet and follow the step to
clear the formatting rule for the entire worksheet.

Step 2: By clicking on the Clear Rules from entire worksheet, all formatting will be removed
from the entire worksheet
 Clear conditional Formatting
 2. Clear formatting from selected cells

In addition, you can also clear the conditional formatting from the selected range of cells. Steps are almost the
same.

In the Home tab, go to Conditional formatting > Clear Rules > Clear Rules from Selected Cells.

Steps

 Step 1: Select the range of cells and use the clear formatting rule for the selected cells.

 Step 2: By clicking on the Clear Rules from Selected Cells, formatting will be removed only from the
selected cells.