Welcome to the next set of Excel Videos. We’ve covered Pivot Tables and Tables in Excel 2007 in depth. Excel Video 44 begins a new series on Conditional Formatting. Conditional Formatting is an Excel tool that allows you to set up a variety of rules or criteria for a set of cells and then change the appearance of the cells based on the criteria. You can change the font, font color, cell color, and a variety of other formats. You can also add a variety of icons, data bars, and color scales to the cells as well, with or without the underlying data.
Conditional Formatting is particularly helpful when you have a lot of data that you update frequently. By setting the appropriate rules, you can quickly scan the report and tell which numbers are too high, too low, above or below average, normal, most important, and much more. On some reports, you may be better off highlighting outliers, data in the top and/or bottom 10%. On other reports, you may want to focus on the trends, adding icons to help you track which direction your data is moving. All of this and more is easy to do with Conditional Formatting. Stay tuned and we’ll go through an example in the next video.
