Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
formatting feature
1: Distinguish business rule violations
Using conditional formatting, you can visually discern when something is breaking a business
rule. For example, Figure A shows a simple timekeeping sheet that highlights a workday that's
greater than eight hours. Why? Because your organization requires approval for anything over an
eight-hour day.
Figure A
Working with the time values complicates things a bit, as you can see in Figure B. This solution
uses >.34 to represent time values greater than eight hours, which will work in most cases -- you
can't use the value 8 or even the time value 8:00. Or you could use the predefined Greater Than
rule in Excel 2007 and 2010, which will automatically use the more accurate value of
0.333333....
Figure B
This formula returns True when a time value is greater than eight hours.
Figure C
Use icons instead of traditional formats to represent conditional rules.
First, select the values in column E and apply one of the default icon sets. Then, use Manage
Rules to manipulate the results. Figure D shows the final settings (click Reverse Icon Order
first).
Figure D
These settings display green and red icons to alert users to an overtime violation.
Figure E
You can distinguish records based on a single value.
Select the entire data range (not the column headings) so Excel can format the entire record
(row). Figure F shows the formula-based settings. The $G2 component creates a relative
address, which updates with each row: G4, G5, G6, and so on. When the value in the referenced
cell equals the string "Condiment," Excel highlights the entire row.
Figure F
You can highlight a row by applying the conditional format to the entire data range instead of a single column.
Figure G
Let users choose the highlighted category from a validation list.
Figure H
Figure I
This rule references the validation list instead of a literal string value.
5: Compare values
It's common to compare values. For instance, you might track inventory levels by comparing the
stock on hand to a reorder level. Using conditional formatting, you can alert users when it's time
to reorder, as shown in Figure J. Select the values you want to format -- in this case, that's
B2:B46. (You could highlight the entire row or one of the inventory values.) Then, apply the
format shown in Figure K.
Figure J
Highlighted items that are running low.
Figure K
This rule highlights the product in column A when the in stock value goes below the reorder level.
6: Compare lists
You can find discrepancies between two lists using a conditional formatting rule, as shown in
Figure L. This rule, shown in Figure M, compares each value in column A to its counterpart in
column B. If they're not the same, Excel highlights the value in column A. To highlight the
values in column B instead, select the values in column B and update the rule formula to
reference the values in column A.
Figure L
This rule highlights values in column A when they differ from the values in column B.
Figure M
Apply this rule to compare the two side-by-side lists.
Figure N
Banding can improve readability, but you'll probably want to highlight even or odd rows and not both, as shown here.
Figure O
Apply either of these rules to create an alternate band effect.
8: Find duplicates
To find duplicate values or records, you can use a filter, but conditional formatting can pinpoint
duplicate values on the fly. For instance, the sheet in Figure P shows duplicate values in a single
column. Select the values you want to format and apply the formula-based rule shown in Figure
Q.
Figure P
Figure Q
This rule highlights all occurrences of the same value.
To ignore the first occurrence and highlight only subsequent values, use this formula:
<code>=COUNTIF($A$2:$A2,A2)>1
If you want to check for duplicate values across multiple columns, concatenate the values and
apply a similar rule to the results, as shown in Figure R. You can also hide duplicates (which I
don't always recommend) by selecting a font color that matches the sheet's background.
Figure R
The concatenating formula in column C finds duplicates across multiple columns.
You can use Excel 2007 and 2010's built-in Find Duplicates rule, but it has a few limitations.
First, you don't have much flexibility with the actual formats. Second, this rule selects all
duplicate values; you can't choose to ignore the first occurrence and highlight just the subsequent
values, as this more flexible formula-based rule can.
9: Find discrepancies
Verifying data is an important task, and Excel's conditional formatting can help by alerting you
to inconsistencies. Figure S shows a common accounting tool known as cross-footing -- the
process of double-checking totals by comparing subtotals across rows and columns -- in cell F16.
Adding the conditional format makes the discrepancy hard to miss when the two totaling values
don't match. Select either of the cross-foot formulas and apply the rule shown in Figure T.
Figure S
Combine conditional formatting with cross-footing for a hard-to-miss alert.
Figure T
This rule compares two values.
Figure U
Figure V
A more complex rule highlights the smallest or largest duplicate value in a range.
This rule is unstable if you use normal referencing, so apply a range name to your data set before
applying the conditional formatting rule. The rule shown in Figure W will highlight the value 3
in the range named List only if 3 is also a duplicate. To find the largest duplicate value, substitute
the MIN() function with MAX().
Figure W
This rule ignores the smallest value unless it's also a duplicate value.