How to use conditional formatting in Excel to visually explore, analyze, and identify patterns and trends.

You can use conditional formatting to highlight cells that contain values which meet a certain condition. Or you can format a whole cell range and vary the exact format as the value of each cell varies.

In Excel, from the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting > New Rule. Next, select the “ Use a formula to determine which cells to format ” option, enter your formula and apply the format of your choice.

Testing whether conditions are true or false and making logical comparisons between expressions are common to many tasks. You can use the AND, OR, NOT, and IF functions to create conditional formulas.

Conditional formatting quickly highlights important information in a spreadsheet. But sometimes the built-in formatting rules don’t go quite far enough. Adding your own formula to a conditional formatting rule gives it a power boost to help you do things the built-in rules can’t do.

There are two ways to apply shading to alternate rows or columns —you can apply the shading by using a simple conditional formatting formula, or you can apply a predefined Excel table style to your data.

Use conditional formatting to find and highlight duplicate data. That way you can review the duplicates and decide if you want to remove them. Select the cells you want to check for duplicates. Note: Excel can't highlight duplicates in the Values area of a PivotTable report.

On the form template, select the control that you want to add conditional formatting to, and then click Conditional Formatting on the Format menu. In the Conditional Formatting dialog box, click Add.

Select the range of cells, the table, or the whole sheet that you want to apply conditional formatting to. On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting. Point to Icon Sets, and then click the icon set that you want. Tip: Icon sets can be combined with other conditional formats.

On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting, and then click New Rule. Select a style, for example, 3-Color Scale, select the conditions that you want, and then click OK.