Excel Video 46 describes how to highlight specific dates and how to find duplicate values using conditional formatting. If you have a list of dates, it’s easy to highlight dates meeting a variety of criteria, such as yesterday/today/tomorrow, last week/this week/next week, and last month/this month/next month. A helpful thing about this feature is that Excel always knows what today is, so if you load the spreadsheet tomorrow, next week, or next month, the conditional formatting always stays current without any additional effort on your part.
You may also find conditional formatting helpful when you need to search for duplicate values. In the past, I’d sort a list and either scan for duplicates or write formulas trying to find duplicates. Excel makes it much easier to find either duplicate values or unique values with conditional formatting.
This video wraps up our review of the Highlight Cells Rules. Stay tuned for Top/Bottom Rules in Excel Video 47.
