Excel Video 56 shows how to conditionally format cells based on a formula. If the formula is true, Excel formats the cell. To understand the example, you need to understand how the OR function and the WEEKDAY function work. The OR function returns true if any of the expressions in the OR function are true. WEEKDAY calculates the day of the week for a given date. I’ve included a table to show how WEEKDAY works, but you don’t need the table to make the example work. The table is included just to make the explanation easier.
The sample data looks at on call dates and formats any days that fall on Saturday (WEEKDAY = 7) or Sunday (WEEKDAY = 1). Also notice that when I write the formula, I only refer to cell B4, the first cell in my range. Excel’s smart enough to change B4 to refer to each cell I conditionally format.
Conditional formatting with formulas opens up a ton of possibilities to conditionally format data. If you can write a formula that returns true or false, you can do a lot of conditionally formatting.
