How to use conditional formatting in Excel to visually explore, analyze, and identify patterns and trends.

You can use conditional formatting to highlight cells that contain values that meet a certain condition, or format a whole cell range and vary the exact format as the value of each cell varies.

Select the range of cells, the table, or the whole sheet that you want to apply conditional formatting to. On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting, point to Highlight Cells Rules, and then click Text that …

You can use conditional formatting to highlight cells that contain values that meet a certain condition, or format a whole cell range and vary the exact format as the value of each cell varies.

Select the range of cells, the table, or the whole sheet that you want to apply conditional formatting to. On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting. Point to Icon Sets, and then click the icon set that …

Unlike other Microsoft Office programs, such as Word, Excel does not provide a button that you can use to highlight all or individual portions of data in a cell. However, you can mimic highlights on a cell in a …

Highlight or shade alternate rows of data with colors or patterns to improve the readability of your Excel worksheets.

Use formulas in conditional formatting to do more than you can with the built-in rules. For example, format blank cells, or see which salespeople are selling above average, or track who has received …

Use the Go To command to quickly find and select all cells that contain specific types of data, such as formulas. Also, use Go To to find only the cells that meet specific criteria,—such as the last cell on …

To find all cells with data validation, select All, and then click OK. To find cells that have the same validation rules as another cell, select Same, and then click OK.