I’m sorry for this probably easy-to-answer question, but my Google-foo has left me. I’d like to implement the following:
I have a spreadsheet in which different numbers stand for different work assignments; there are four different assignments, all of which at any given time need to be filled. The numbers add up to 18 or 24. What I would like to do is have excel check each column (day) if the numbers add up to either of these sums, and if so, color each column green; and if not, color the column red, so I know I missed an assignment (or double assigned, or whatever).
I wanted to do this simply (it need not be pretty) by adding up the column at the bottom and then do a “if-then” check, but I cannot find a way to make a “then->color red” command.
Conditional Formatting will work. You should get three choices for conditions for formatting cells, and you could easily do the IF SUM (A1:Z1) = 18 then change last part to shading cell red. I don’t have Excel on this machine, but there may be “= 18 or 24” available. Play around there, under FORMAT, I believe.
Uncle Bill has you on the right track. I will just add that conditional formatting is an attribute of an individual cell so there is no place to say “make the whole column red.” However, you *can *select multiple cells (in this case the whole column) and apply conditional formatting to all of them at once.
I am not sure about the “or” part, that might work. If not, you can just define two conditions. Excel will check the conditions in order and stop at the first one that is true.
Uncle Bill’s instructions work for Excel 2003 and earlier. For Excel 2007 you have many, many more options. The Conditional Formatting button is on the Home tab in the Styles block.
OMG, it is a magical tapestry of conditional formatting options. Maybe you want colored bars whose lengths correlate to the cell’s value!! Maybe you want icons that look like traffic lights, yes? Yes!! Maybe you want Consumer Reports style circles, with an increasing number of filled in quadrants? All of this–and more!–is available in Excel 2007.
Yes, but only if you can navigate through the !@# ()&#@ !&* (!#%) @#!& &!#*$& ribbon to find the right commands.
I bill for my time so I have a good measure of how long it takes to do things; after I noticed that a productivity loss of about 10% was persisting even a couple of months after switching to Excel 2007, we downgraded.
OK, rant over… back to the regularly scheduled thread.
Well, it is on the first page you see when you start Excel…MS Office 2007 is guilty of a number of sins, but this certainly isn’t one of them. Mind you, I hate the ribbons too…
