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Jan 6, 2023
Philip Wiest, Guest Blogger
Conditional formatting in Microsoft® Excel® is an essential skill to learn, so you easily review and analyze data, detect any issues and identify patterns and trends. Conditional formatting allows you to easily highlight cells and visualize data by using bars, color scales and icons that correspond to your data.
When you use conditionally formatting, it will change the appearance of your cells based on conditions that you specify. If the conditions are true, the cell range will be formatted. If the conditions are false, the cell range is not formatted.
Many conditions are built in to Excel, but you can also create your own. They can be applied to a range of cells, an Excel table or even a PivotTable report.
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On some Excel sheets, you may want a visual guide to help you better see the variations in your data. A two-color scale can be used to compare a range of cells using different shades of color to represent different values. In a red and yellow color scale, for example, you can specify that higher value cells have shades of red and lower value cells will have shades of yellow.
In a PivotTable report, you can change the method of scoping for fields in the Values area using the Formatting Options button next to a PivotTable field that with conditional formatting.
When you are using numbers, you may want to use an icon set to annotate and classify data. The data will be categorized in three to five areas and separated by a threshold value. Each icon used will represents a range of values. In the arrows icon set, the green up arrow will be your highest values, the yellow sideways arrow will be mid-range values, and the red down arrow will be your lower values.
In a PivotTable report, you can change the method of scoping for fields in the Values area using the Formatting Options button next to a PivotTable field that with conditional formatting.
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Philip Wiest
Guest Blogger
Philip Wiest is an expert software trainer, computer analyst and database consultant who knows both the intricacies of computer systems and the ways today’s professionals need to use these essential business tools. Using his experience in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Office, as well as Windows and the Internet, Phil uses a special mix of tactful guidance and distilled observation so his audiences learn and retain the critical keystrokes, application combinations and creative processes that save time and simplify computer use.
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