I have a perplexing problem with one of my Excel spreadsheets. I have a "task list" spreadsheet, with conditional formatting to highlight items that are near their due date and overdue. One cell in my entire worksheet is not allowing the conditional formatting, and I am not sure why. It does not matter what is in the cell.
I have tried:
deleting the table row
deleting the entire row
re-typing the cell
re-sorting the cells
deleting and re-creating the rule
verifying that the rule is applied to that cell
Any ideas as to what is causing this?
The affected cell is D5. You can download the spreadsheet here: Google Drive download link
Since that's cell D5, instead of ROW()>5 you should use ROW()>=5.
Also "before today" would be <TODAY() . The +1 makes it "before tomorrow".
It's kind of unusual to have a row number in there at all. I assume you did that so you could apply the format to the whole column but if the extra cells are not dates (like, are just titles) then they shouldn't be affected by the conditional formatting.
If it was me, I would clear all the formatting from that column and in D5 add the simple conditional formatting criteria =D5<TODAY(), then copy that cell, click heading D to select the entire column, Ctrl+Alt+V and Paste Formats.
Better yet, only apply the Conditional Formatting to the cells that need it, not the whole column. Conditional Formatting increases the file size and slow down calculation more that one would think. (I was argued that but was proven wrong!)
Related
I have a conditional formatting rule in place that says "If cell Q4 is blank, format the cells so that all cell's fill, borders, shading, etc. are also blank, so that it appears as if there is no content present, and is formatted accordingly. This cleans up the look of the report if content has not been added yet. When Q4 is not blank, the conditional formatting rule is not applied, and there is some significant formatting I have done on that range of cells. See the attached picture for what I hope to be a better explanation of the intended function. All of the cell formatting is not applied (appears as a blank sheet) if the highlighted cell (Q4) is empty.
My issue is, when I scroll down so that the cells that are affected by the conditional formatting are no longer in view, and then scroll back so that they are in view, the conditional formatting keeping the cells with no border, shading, fill, etc. is not retained for some, but not all, of the cells in the desired range. What is even more strange is if I click out of excel (into a browser window for example) and then back into excel, one additional cell no longer has the conditional formatting applied that keeps it blank. If I go into the cell that controls the visibility of the affected cells (Q4) which is already empty, and press delete, the conditional formatting gets applied until I scroll out of view and the process repeats itself. Any suggestions on correcting this excel bug? The data is not formatted as a table, so unchecking banded rows is not applicable, and I have made sure that EnableFormatConditionsCalculation is set to TRUE in the VBA, where were the two solutions that I found online to fix this same issue.
Correctly functioning conditional formatting shown, where because Q4 is not empty, the cell formatting is visible (conditional formatting to make the range of cells appear blank is not applied)
There is some subtle cause for this. Might Q4 have an invisible space character? If it does, you can change the conditional formatting rule to =LEN($Q$4)=0. Also, did you 'anchor' cell $Q$4 within your formatting formula? Did you intend for the blank cell condition to follow your data per row- Q4....Q5...Q6? If so, Q4 should be relative. You do not show your actual conditional formatting formula. It will help greatly to include your formula itself.
I have a spreadsheet with a number of sheets used by users. They are asked to input information in some of the sheets and the first Sheet is a summary of results. There are four conditions, if selected, lead to a pens down scenario where no further work needs to take place. Let's say if, Cells A1, B1, and C1 = "No", or if Col 1 in Sheet 2 contains "No", no further work needs to be done in Cells D12:K39, or some such range.
I thought running with conditional formatting may work, but the results are not great. Something like: =$A$1="No", and so on for the other conditions, then I colour out the selection range
I'm very new to VBA, but see this as way to get my results. I have no idea how to structure the above condition.
Don't give up on conditional formatting just yet.
Select Cells D12:K39
Go to Conditional Formatting > Use a formula to determine which cells to format
Enter the formula =OR(COUNTIF($A$1:$C$1,"No")=3,COUNTIF(Sheet2!$A:$A,"No")>0)
Change the formatting as needed
I'm trying to create a rule that formats a row so that it has red background color if the content of another row is "x". Unfortunately, the header and empty cells above the table will be included if I simply select =$H:$H="x" as my condition for formatting. I want something like: =$H$6:$H$(INFINITY). Is this possible?
If you want to apply the conditional formatting starting from Row6, while selecting the range for applying the conditional formatting, make sure C6 should be the first cell in the selection i.e. it should be the active cell in the selection and then make a new rule for conditional formatting using the formula given below.
=$H6="x"
Also if you are not sure how far you need to apply this conditional formatting down the rows, would be better if you format your data as an Excel Table, so when the data grows withing the table down the rows, the conditional formatting will also be carried to the new rows added in the table.
Having a conditional formatting for a unused range on the sheet increases the file size as all the rows contain the conditional formatting and the formula in the background.
You can just use =$H$6:$H$1048576 or =$H$6:$H$65536 while applying conditional formatting. A simplest way of doing this.
Your formula does lag a lot as you are searching through so many rows down. THe best thing you can do is try to limit the amount of rows to search. I.e. if you know your dataset only contains max 5000 rows, set the limit to that H6:H5000. This will help.
If the rows change a lot, the best way would be to make it dynamic. I.e. make a name range for the range you want to validate and in the name manager, change the range to include offset. This will help you set the range to be what you have data in. Note: You need to know how many rows (i.e. use counta) which you will need to figure out if there are blanks at any point. Otherwise you do the counta on a column where you have no blanks.
Hope this makes sense and easy for you.
I'm constructing a series of spreadsheets that will be used as a checklist and setting up conditional formatting so that if a particular item has been checked, a user enters "y" in the next cell over and both the cell containing the checklist item and the cell containing the "y" both turn green.
For example, if column A contains the list items, column B will be blank to enter "y" as items are completed. I'm setting up conditional formatting with the formula: =$B2="y" and selecting to apply this to =$A$2:$B$50
This all works perfectly when I have it set up in the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager window, but as soon as I click ok or apply, Excel ruins all of my formulas. It changes the formula from =$B2="y" to =$B1048576="y". It doesn't stop me from editing the formula and changing the value back to 2, but I'm not sure why it is doing this. I believe it is that same number every time, but honestly I haven't kept track.
As I have to apply this formatting to ~50 workbooks, this is getting super annoying. Anyone know what the cause is or how to make excel stop messing with my formula?
My excel level is probably basic/intermediate
PS. My workplace refuses to upgrade to modern software and we're stuck with office '07. If this is an excel bug I might be able to use that as some leverage to finally get an upgrade, any info would be helpful.
your formula is fine, however change your application method. To make your life easier, delete your current entry as the formula is rather short. if the real formula is complex, consider editing the formula and then copying it to memory before deleting it.
When assigning conditional formatting with a cell reference that is not locked, I select my table or ranges first and then make sure the left most upper cell is the active cell.
I then enter my formula in conditional formatting and hit apply. The cell in the formula will adjust itself based on what the active cell was when it was entered it seems. When I have done this and the active cell was in the bottom right corner of my selection, I would get really screwy (technical term) numbers in my formula after and the conditional formatting would not work as intended.
I've been searching around here but I can't find anything quite like what I'm after.
In excel I have one column with a drop down list of a dozen different initials, with conditional formatting on those cells. I would also like to format another column based on those initials, but don't want to set up a dozen rules on each cell, one by one. If I set up the top cell with the correct rules I cannot fill the formatting in because the formula is not updated on a row by row basis, but en bloc for the range.
I have no real experience with VBA or macro's, is there a way to do this more elegantly than brute force?
Thank you very much in advance. This forum has always been a great help, hopefully you can help this, too!
I hope I'm not misunderstanding your question. You can copy the formatting to the other columns if you have set up the format as a formula. For example, if A is your column with initials, and you have a data cell in B2, then you can set a formula in B2 as A2="ER", for example, with the formatting you want, and do the same for the rest of your matches on A2. Then, you can copy the format down column B (unfiltered) using Paste Special Format. You can copy the conditional formats across as long as you make sure that your format in the conditional formatting rule is anchored on column A (i.e., $A2="ER").