conditional+formatting

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=Excel and its miracles.=



=Were you ever asked to organized tons of date in excel and was totally lost?= = =

If this has never happened to you then you are really fortunate. However, there may be so much data that it would be hard for someone to make sense of all the information. I had straggle with it once, until I discovered the features of the new and improved Microsoft Excel 2007. It has amazing options to help you organize data quickly and more efficiently than the older version. Conditional formatting helps to make certain information stand out.

As we all know excel has the composite to hold as much data as we want. That may accumulate into hundreds of pages. What if you want quickly to compare values in one column or see which dates occurred after certain date? You can sort and filter the date located in the home tab. It would be easier to make the figures visually standing out without modifying the data. Conditional formatting button is located in the styles group in the home tab. There are a couple of options for you to choose from. For example: data bars, color scales, icon sets. You can try them and see what style you like the most. These effects will help you the values of the cells stand out, so it is easier to locate data and find whatever you want to stand out quickly. Let me explain more how conditional formatting works. Let says, you need to find all the values that are greater than 1000 in a particular column. In the very beginning you need to select the range of the data you want to format. Then in the home tab, in the styles group click on the conditional formatting button. Next point the cursor to highlight cells rules, then greater than. Type the values you want to be formatted. In the box next to it, you can choose any formatting you prefer. Now without any problems you can see all the values that are greater than 1000. If you change a value to any of the cell in that particular column the formatting will update automatically. Is it amazing? Conditional formatting can be also use to compare the values of all cells in the range. First of all, highlight the information you want to format. First are data bars, these colors are changeable in width depending of the value of the cell. The highest value gets the widest bar, and the lowest value gets the narrowest bar. All the other bars are the size according to their respective values. To make the information more noticeable you can hide the values of the cell. It is useful when the values are very small. In order for you to do this you need to go to the conditioning formatting located in the home tab, in the styles group. Point your mouse over manage rules. Now in the box on top choose this worksheet, than select the rule. Now click on edit rule button and check of the box, show bar only. If you look at the spreadsheet, you can see how nice and neat your column is. You can easily see the highest/lowest values of the piece, without taking closer look at the spreadsheet. Let’s use different example of formatting cells. Now, let’s rank top three cells in particular column. In order to do this, you need to go to the conditional formatting located on the home tab, in the styles group. Point your mouse on the top/bottom rules. Then point you mouse on the top 10 items. In the first box choose how many top items you want to demonstrate. The second box is for you to change the formatting colors as you prefer. You can format the range to show the bottom three values, the average or as you prefer. You can play with all these functions to see how they work. Highlight cell rules and top/bottom rules use only one type of formatting to highlight particular cell you need. What I found out while doing one of my homework is that a cell can have up to 3 format conditions, each with its own formats. This allows you to have different formats depending on the value of the cell. For example, if the value was greater than 300, you can display the text in red, but if the value is between 100 and 200, display the text in green, and if the value was smaller than 100, display the text in yellow.  There are plenty of different formatting styles to choose from. I will recommend playing with them, seeing how they look, work. I could go over with each of them, but one thing for sure is that you will not learn as much as if you do it yourself. Conditional formatting is a enormous tool, where if it is used properly it may save you a lot of time, and money. I found conditional formatting so much helpful that I decided to share it with all of you. Hopefully you will find it useful as well.

Need some help with conditional formatting in Excel?Try clicking the help button in Excel and typing "Conditional Formatting" in the search box.For Excel homework #5: -Highlight the numbers you need to distinguish between above and below average. -click on the drop down arrow on Conditional Formatting on the Home tab. -Use Top/Bottom Rules - For each set of numbers, you'll need to click Above Average(choose a color to show the Above Average numbers), and then for the same set of numbers, go back and click Below Average(again, select a different color than the Above Average numbers).

Hope this helps. (**sanchezm13, info 273, professor colucci)**