Microsoft Excel is probably the most powerful tool in the entire Office suite, and it has become so popular and functional that some jobs require knowing how to handle Excel at an intermediate level as one of their requirements.
You can download Excel from its website, use its online version, or purchase a physical version along with other Microsoft Office programs.In this article, we will teach you how Change the color of a cellA number or letter, as the case may be, but some conditions are automatically taken into account.
How does conditional color formatting work in Excel?
This Conditional Formatting feature It is used to place a certain type of color and/or font into cells that contain values that meet certain criteria. The values can be either letters or numbers, so you can change the color of a line based on text or numbers.
This option is located in the Home tab, Style options and Conditional Formatting, by doing this you will see several main options that will change the cell format based on the conditions you specify, in all content At the end, if needed, you’ll be able to specify your own rules with more detailed conditions and then apply them as many times as you want.
After placing rulers and formatting, in select the corresponding cell And accept that all who meet the criteria you put will be affected by the format, the rest will not.
What are the criteria for using conditional formatting in Excel documents?
Before using conditional formatting to change the color of a cell, there are some aspects to consider, otherwise, when trying to apply the formatting, an error may occur and the changes will not be applied.
Organize data in a table
This may be a cliché, but it’s important to stress it, all Data must be properly organized and ordered, that is, if they correspond to a row or column, the same class must exist, not a random cell. Same if you have multiple sheets in the same spreadsheet, if some data corresponds to a sheet, they must remain in it.
This has to be because when applying the rules, you have to select the area where the data you want to modify the format is in, and it’s easier for Excel if you group them.
There are similar criteria (numbers or letters)
The criteria, rules, or conditions to be established must be consistent with the data found in the cells, that is, if you want to change the formatting after a numerical condition, the cells must have numbers, and the same applies to the case of letters; otherwise, Excel The command will not be recognized, so nothing will be changed at all.
How to automatically change the color of cells in Excel?
Once you have all your data organized, the first thing you have to do is select those that will suffer Changes in formate, either an entire row, an entire column, or a combination of these. Now you go to Home > Styles > Conditional Formatting > New Rule or Manage Rules.
In the new dialog, we select «Format only contains«Here you will build the condition and choose the format based on value, text, date, error, no error, if you change the color of the cell, change the color of the text and its style.
According to this text
When we select this option, we will be able to change the color in the cell based on the text starting with a specific lettersit ends, it contains and does not contain, in the box next to it, we will specify the above, when we specify the format and everything, we click accept or apply and we will apply to all that conforms to our rules cell to make changes.
If we want to change this text rule to another, in the «Manage Rules» option, we can make the corresponding version, from here also we can choose to delete or add new conditions.
depends on the value
If it is a number, then the option we choose will be «cell valuethen we will do the following: between, not between, equal to, not equal to, greater than, less than, greater than or equal, less than or equal to. In this sense, you have to be more specific than the previous case, and then specify corresponding value.
The process is the same when you’ve determined everything (including formatting), before selecting cells, you apply your rules and all cells that match your criteria will have their formatting changed.