Tracy van der Schyff

#Office365Challenge – Excel Conditional Formatting – Highlighting Cell Rules. Excel has many options when it comes to Conditional Formatting. Today we’ll take a look at Highlighting Cell Rules. If you want to highlight certain areas in your spreadsheet – that contains certain text – or complies with rules you have configured – this is how you will go about it:

Highlight all the text (1) in your spreadsheet (or the specific column if applicable). Click on the Home Tab (2), Conditional Formatting (3), then on Highlight Cell Rules (4).
Here you’ll see different options:
Greater Than
Less Than
Between
Equal To
Text that Contains
A Date Occurring
Duplicate Values
Using any of the above you can setup rules. In this example we’ll use Text that Contains (5). Click on this to configure.

Once clicked, you can enter the text it must contain (6) and even choose the formatting (7). Click on OK to save and apply (8). All the cells in the spreadsheet that complies with your rule – will now be formatted based on the formatting you chose.
You can remove any conditional formatting by selecting all cells in the spreadsheet, clicking on the Home Tab > Conditional Formatting (9), Clear Rules (10), then Clear Rules from selected Text (11).

Tomorrow we’ll look at some more Conditional Formatting Tips.

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.

Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not only apply to Office 365 – but where applicable, to the overall Microsoft Office Suite and SharePoint.