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Conditional formatting refers to the function in Excel which changes the format of the cells if a particular condition is met. Say, highlight all the numbers below ten or highlight cells with the text "good" and so on. The requirements and formats vary from person to person and file to file.
Here are five ways to do Conditional formatting in Excel:
Highlighting cells
Highlighting cells provides the option to highlight the cells from the selected range, fulfilling specific criteria. The criteria could be a cell value greater than or equal to a particular number, a text, a date, or a duplicate value. Based on the conditions, you set the format you want by changing the cell's color, font, or border.
Icon sets
Icon sets depict the changes in the value, positive, negative, or no change.
Suppose you have the sales data for a month, and you want to know the sales pattern. Here, you can use the icon set to depict the change in sales values. Excel also allows you to choose from various icon sets that fit best with your data.
Color scales
Color scales are often referred to as heat maps. Color scales are visual formatting applied to the data that helps you understand the variations in the data. Under this type of formatting, a color, say green, is divided into various color shades, and cells based on the values are assigned shades. For example, for numbers ranging from 10 to 1000, the darkest shade would be for 1000, lightest for 10, and so on.
Data Bars
Data bars are similar to color scales, and the difference is that in applying data bars, the cells are assigned bars, the highest bar to the most significant number and the smallest to the smallest number. This type of conditional formatting is also used to analyze the variation of the data.
Setting rules
Despite the many options to apply conditional formatting, there is a situation that does not fit our requirements. In that case, we can set our own rules and formats. Based on the rules, Further Excel performs conditional formatting.
Understanding extensive data in Excel can be challenging at times. Therefore, apply conditional formatting to understand and find results from considerable data in a few seconds. Let us know in the comments section which type of formatting you like using the most.