Conditional Formatting

Spotting particular values in a large table of numbers or text can be difficult – but fortunately Excel has a neat way to help you do this using a technique that’s been considerably enhanced in the 2007 version. It’s called Conditional Formatting and it enables you to apply specific formatting automatically to cells that meet certain conditions. So, for example, if you want all cells in a table that contain values that are above 1000 to have a bold red font, and a pale blue background, then the system will do this for you. You don’t have to identify the cells yourself. In previous versions of Excel you could have up to three conditions so particularly high values could be formatted in one colour, particularly low ones in another colour and in-between values in a third colour. Excel 2007 allows you to specify an unlimited number of conditions – not only that, but you now have greater control over how the rules are applied. In previous editions, if Excel found a condition that applied to a cell, then it wouldn’t look for other conditions. Now you can tell it to check other rules, and specify the order in which it does so. The new edition goes further by incorporating data bars, icon sets or color scales that appear in cells. These indicate how the value in a cell relates to others in a highlighted range. You can use conditional formatting to show duplicate entries in a list or dates that occur next week. The options are almost endless – just don’t get too carried away!