Excel - Guide to conditional formatting

Dates

Using conditional formatting for dates is an extremely useful way of bringing some visual management to schedules, diaries and other tools where dates are used. The ability to dynamically highlight today, tomorrow or the current week is something that would be of benefit to the majority of workplaces. Excel has the functionality to do this with just a few clicks using the 'Format only cells that contain', 'Dates occurring option. It can be configured to highlight dates relating to, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, In the last 7 days, Last Week, Next week, Last month, This month, Next month

In the following examples, I'm using a list of dates that begins at the start of the next month and decreases by a day for each subsequent row.

Day related conditional formatting

Highlight yesterday with a different colour

Highlight today with a different colour

Highlight tomorrow with a different colour

Week related conditional formatting

Highlight date in the previous 7 days with a different colour

Highlight dates in the previous week with a different colour

Highlight dates in the current week with a different colour

Highlight dates in the next week with a different colour

Month related conditional formatting

Highlight dates in the previous month with a different colour

Highlight dates in the current month with a different colour

Highlight dates in the next month with a different colour

Blanks

Highlight blank values with a different colour

Highlight non blank values with a different colour

Errors

Highlight errors with a different colour

Highlight values that arent errors with a different colour

Highest/Lowest

Highlight top (highest) 10 values with a different colour

Highlight bottom (lowest) 10 values with a different colour

Above/Below average

Highlight values above average with a different colour

Highlight values below average with a different colour

Duplicates and unique values

Highlight duplicate values (duplicates) with a different colour

Highlight unique values with a different colour

Comments

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