Chapter 5: Formatting Worksheets
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To assign an icon set to a range, select the cells and choose Home ➪ Styles ➪ Conditional
Formatting ➪ Icon Sets. Excel provides 20 icon sets from which you may choose. The num-
ber of icons in the sets ranges from three to five. You can’t create a custom icon set.
Figure 5.14 shows an example that uses an icon set. The symbols graphically depict the sta-
tus of each project, based on the value in column C.
FIGURE 5.14
Using an icon set to indicate the status of projects
The icon set example in this section is available on this book’s website at http://www.wiley.com/go/
excel2019bible. The workbook is named icon set examples.xlsx.By default, the symbols are assigned using percentiles. For a three-symbol set, the items are
grouped into three percentiles. For a four-symbol set, they’re grouped into four percentiles. For
a five-symbol set, the items are grouped into five percentiles.
If you would like more control over how the icons are assigned, choose Home ➪ Styles ➪
Conditional Formatting ➪ Icon Sets ➪ More Rules to display the New Formatting Rule dia-
log box. To modify an existing rule, choose Home ➪ Styles ➪ Conditional Formatting ➪
Manage Rules. Then select the rule to modify and click the Edit Rule button.
Figure 5.15 shows how to modify the icon set rules such that only projects that are 100 percent
complete get the check mark icons. Projects that are 0 percent complete get the X icon. All
other projects get no icon.