When the Less Than dialog pops up, we select the cell B2 against which we want to compare. In our example, we select cell C2 and click on “Conditional Formatting -> Highlight Cell Rules -> Less Than” on the home tab. Tedious Way – Lots Individual Conditional Formatting Rulesįor complex conditional formatting rules, users often get around that problem by creating lots of individual rules applied to single cells.
When absolute references are used in conditional formatting rules, every cell to which the conditional formatting rule is applied is compared to that single referenced cell. (ExcellsFun has a great video that explains relative and absolute cell references). By default, conditional formatting inserts an absolute reference when we select another cell as a reference. Let’s say we want to highlight the cells where sales have decreased compared to the previous year.
Outlook conditional formatting all but how to#
In this blog post, we will learn how to use relative references in conditional formatting rules to make such tasks easier.įor example, consider the spreadsheet below where we have sales data for different branches of an organization over the years 2005 to 2009: However, users often want to create conditional formatting rules that go beyond comparing a cell’s value to a single value or a single cell reference – row or column comparisons are commonly requested operations.
This is the second in a series of oldies but goodies Excel posts.)Ĭonditional formatting is a popular feature and is a great way to easily identify cells with a range that meet some criteria. Why? Because so many of you keep searching for it. (We are re-publishing this post first published in April 2010. Thanks to Amit Velingkar for writing this blog post.