Excel 2010 Bible

Part III: Creating Charts and Graphics

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The formatting suggestions in the drop-down list are just a few of thousands of different formatting

combinations. If none of Excel’s suggestions are what you want, choose the Custom Format option

to display the Format Cells dialog box. You can specify the format in any or all of the four tabs:

Number, Font, Border, and Fill.

Note
The Format Cells dialog box used for conditional formatting is a modified version of the standard Format Cells
dialog box. It doesn’t have the Alignment and Protection tabs, and some of the Font formatting options are dis-
abled. The dialog box also includes a Clear button that clears any formatting already selected. n

Making your own rules

For do-it-yourself types, Excel provides the New Formatting Rule dialog box, shown in Figure 20.3.

Access this dialog box by choosing Home ➪ Styles ➪ Conditional Formatting ➪ New Rules.

Use the New Formatting Rule dialog box to re-create all the conditional format rules available via

the Ribbon, as well as new rules. First, select a general rule type from the list at the top of the dia-

log box. The bottom part of the dialog box varies, depending on your selection at the top. After

you specify the rule, click the Format button to specify the type of formatting to apply if the condi-

tion is met. An exception is the first rule type, which doesn’t have a Format button (it uses graph-

ics rather than cell formatting).

Here is a summary of the rule types:

l Format all cells based on their values: Use this rule type to create rules that display data

bars, color scales, or icon sets.

l Format only cells that contain: Use this rule type to create rules that format cells based

on mathematical comparisons (greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, less than

or equal to, equal to, not equal to, between, not between). You can also create rules based

If you’ve used conditional formatting in Excel 2007, you’ll find several improvements in Excel 2010:

l (^) Data bars display proportionally.
l (^) Data bars can display in a solid color with a border. Previously, data bars always displayed
with a gradient.
l (^) Data bars handle negative values much better.
l (^) You can specify minimum and maximum values for data bars.
l (^) You can create customized Icon sets.
l (^) Hiding one or more icons in an icon set is easy.
Excel 2010 Improvements