Excel Conditional Formatting

Lesson 21: Excel Conditional Formatting

Let's say that you want to attract attention to certain data in your reports or databases. You would like that when the value of a cell is greater then $50 the font turns blue and the background color changes to green. You need "Conditional Formatting" .

Select   the cell or the cells where you want this to happen go to the menu bar Format/Conditional Formatting and the following window appears (may vary depending on the Excel version that you use).

Select "greater than" in the second text box, enter 50 in the third  text box and then click on the "Format" button. Choose blue as color for  the font and select the "Patterns" tab and select the color green. Now if you write any number greater than 50 in one of the formatted cells the color of the font and of the background will change. If the value is smaller than 50 the default  format is selected.

When you don't want zero values to appear in a worksheet, you go to "Tools/Options/General" and remove the check for "Zero Values" but if you want not to see only the zero values within the table and not the total cells, select the interior of the table and use a conditional format that says "Cell value/Equal to/0" and then select the color white for the font.

With more and more reports being read on screen the Excel conditional formatting is an interesting tool.

There are  five sections in this website

Section 1: About Databases: 4 Lessons
In this section we review the basic notions on databases and evaluate Excel as a database. You will then see how Excel can be used downstream from most centralized databases and data management programs. Finally we will discuss the "upgrade" from Excel to Access..
Section 2: Excel and External Data: 5 Lessons
There are many ways to get data into your Excel Workbooks and there are many ways to easily extract data from all the databases in your organization and the Internet. This section is centered on querying data
Section 3: Analyzing Data with Excel: 8 Lessons
Once you have the data in the right formats within your Excel workbook it is time to use the powerful analytical tools of Excel including the database functionalities (sort, filter, subtotals), the integrated calculator, the comparative analysis tools and the mysterious and not so complicated pivot tables. 
Section 4: Reporting with Excel: 7 Lessons
The report is a communication tool and you can not accept to compromise on its presentation. Excel is the best reporting tool allowing you to easily develop popular dashboards and to share these reports with multiple colleagues.
Section 5: Other Functionalities in Excel: 3 Lessons
In this fifth section you will review the useful CTRL and ALT keystrokes, the conditional formatting, the drop-down lists and other interesting functionalities.