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How to Apply Conditional Formatting in Excel 2010

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2016-03-27 13:58:03
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Excel 2010's conditional formatting lets you change the appearance of a cell based on its value or another cell's value. You specify certain conditions, and when those conditions are met, Excel applies the formatting that you choose. You might use conditional formatting to locate dates that meet a certain criteria (such as falling on a Saturday or Sunday), to call out the highest or lowest values in a range, or to indicate values that fall under, over, or between specified amounts.

Select the cells to which you want to apply conditional formatting.

In most cases, you will select a single column or row of data in a table rather than an entire table.

On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click the Conditional Formatting button.

A menu appears with several different options for specifying the criteria.

Point to Highlight Cells Rules and then select the type of criterion you want to use.

Point to Highlight Cells Rules and then select the type of criterion you want to use.

Criteria options include Greater Than, Less Than, Between, Equal To, Text That Contains, A Date Occurring, and Duplicate Values. A dialog box opens, where you can specify the values.

Enter the values you want to reference in the text box.

You can type a value here, such as 500, or you can reference a cell address, such as F12.

Click the drop-down arrow next to the format options and select the desired formatting.

Live Preview shows you what your data will look like. Click the Custom Format option if you want to create your own formatting selections.

Click OK.

Click OK.

The cells that meet the specified criteria now appear with the chosen formatting options.

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Diane Koers owns and operates All Business Service, a software training and consulting business formed in 1988 that services the central Indiana area. Her are of expertise h as long been in the word processing, spreadsheet, and graphics area of computing as well as in providing training and support for Peachtree Accounting Software. Diane's authoring experience includes more than 30 books on topics such as PC security, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works, WordPerfect, Paint Shop Pro, Lotus SmartSuite, Quicken, Microsoft Money, and Peachtree Accounting. Many of her books have been translated into other languages such as Dutch, Bulgarian, Spanish, and Greek. She has also developed and written numerous training manuals for her clients.