Techniques to use for Microsoft Excel - Conditional Formatting

Microsoft Excel enables you to produce professional looking, functional worksheets for many different purposes. No matter what type of job you do, it's likely that at some stage you will need a list of tables of data that requires some kind of manipulation or numerical processing (such as sorting, filtering or totalling).

Excel has many features that allow you to create complex spreadsheets. Here are 10 relevant skills and techniques:

• Advanced editing and formatting. Including custom and conditional formatting, hiding selected data and using subtotalling.
• Security. Restricting access to spreadsheets or protecting the content of certain cells within spreadsheets from accidental editing.
• Linking. Links to data within worksheets or different workbooks.
• Lists. The specific features which can be used when the spreadsheet is in a list format.
• Sorting & Filtering. Including customer sorts and advanced filtering options.
• Charts and Graphs. Including formatting and modifying of various chart types.
• Functions. Using a wide range of functions, including numerical, text, logical and lookup. Also includes complex formulas with nested functions.
• Charts and Graphs. Including formatting and modifying of various chart types.
• Analysis techniques. Including pivot tables, scenarios, and data tables.
• Macros. Instructions to perform repetitive tasks with a single command.

In today's post we will talk about Advanced editing and formatting.

Example: We have a revenue data of each salesperson, and we would like to see who hit the target. We can use conditional formatting to highlight it for us.

1. Select conditional formatting
2. Highlight the Total Sales Figures, the range E3:E5.


3. Select Highlight Cells Rules - More rules. The Conditional formatting dialog box will be displayed.
4. In the drop down criterial box, select only format cells that contain - cell value greater than. Enter the value in the next box.
5. Click the format button and select the font colour. Click OK

Note: All cell formatting can be removed using Edit/ Clear/ Formats. This removes conditional formatting along with other types of formatting.