Do you like to keep track of multiple conditions on a single spreadsheet? Google Sheets has you covered! In this post, we’ll show you how to create conditional formatting rules that run based on the value of two or more columns.
Conditional Formatting in Google Sheets
There are multiple conditional formatting options in Google Sheets, including text formatting, number formatting, and bar chart formatting.
Text Formatting
One common use of conditional formatting is to change the text formatting for different cells based on a condition. For example, you can change the font size for cells that have a value greater than 50, or change the color of cells that have a value greater than 100.
Number Formatting
You can also use conditional formatting to change the number formatting for different cells. For example, you can change the number font size and color for cells that have a value greater than 100.
Bar Chart Formatting
You can also use conditional formatting to create bar charts. For example, you can use conditional formatting to change the color of bars that have a value greater than a certain threshold.
Applying Multiple Conditions
In Google Sheets, you can conditional format cells based on multiple conditions. This can be helpful if you need to format data in a table in a way that depends on multiple factors.
For example, you might want to format a row of data in a table based on the height of a person. You could use a conditional formatting rule to conditionally format the height column based on a user’s gender.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Look at the data you want to format.
2. In the data row you want to format, click the icon in the toolbar that looks like three lines stacked on top of each other.
3. Click the conditional formatting button.
4. In the conditional formatting dialog box, under “Conditional Formatting Rules,” select “Multiple conditions.”
5. In the “Multiple conditions” dialog box, select the conditions you want to use.
6. Click the “Format” button.
7. In the “Format” dialog box, you can choose how the data should be formatted.
8. Click the “Close” button to apply the conditional formatting.
Using OR & AND Logic
Conditional formatting can be expanded to include more than two conditions. To do this, we use the OR (or) operator. In this example, we are formatting the cells based on whether the value in the cell is greater than or equal to 100 and less than or equal to 200.
To format the cells based on the OR operator, we need to add an extra column to our spreadsheet. We’ll call this column “Condition.”
Then, we will insert the OR operator into the cell just below the “Data” column, like this:
=OR(Data>=100, Data<=200)
Finally, we will format the cells using the conditional formatting menu, like this:
= conditionalFormatting.format(Cell1, Cell2, “Condition”)
Highlighting Duplicates
Duplicate values in google spreadsheet can be highlighted in various ways to make them easily identifiable. One simple way is to use the conditional formatting feature to apply a different color to values that are duplicates.
For example, you could conditional format a cell to highlight any values that are duplicates by selecting the “Duplicate Values” option from the Format Cells dialog box. This will cause the cell to display a blue border around the values, and they will also be highlighted in a different color.
You can also use the “Duplicate Values” filter in the Filters panel to find and highlight duplicates automatically. Just select the “Duplicate Values” filter, and then click on the “Apply” button to start highlighting duplicates.
Both of these methods will highlight duplicates both in the current spreadsheet row and column, so be sure to select the appropriate filter depending on your needs.
Custom Number Formats
There are a few number formats that you can use in Google Sheets. The general format is as follows:
1, 2, 3, 4
The first number is the value that will be displayed, the second number is the value that will be used if the first number is less than the second number, and the third number is the value that will be used if the first number is greater than the second number.
For example, if you want to format a column to show the number of times a certain condition is met, you can use the format 1, 2, 3, 4,
- If the condition is met four times, the column will show “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4”. If the condition is met three times, the column will show “1”, “1”, and “2”. If the condition is met twice, the column will show “1”, “2”, and “3”. And if the condition is not met, the column will show “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4”.
Checking for Blank Cells
The simplest way to check for blank cells is to use the IF function in Google Sheets. The IF function will return a value if the condition is met, or it will return a blank cell if the condition is not met.
For example, to check for a cell that is empty, you would use the IF function like this:
IF (((A2)>0)&&(A2<=100))
This would return the value “true” if the cell A2 is greater than 0 and less than 100, or it would return the value “false” if the cell is not empty.
Conclusion
If you need to conditionally format data in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, you can use the IF function. For example, if you want to format a cell if it contains a number between 1 and 100, you would use the IF function and enter: IF(B4>=1, “small”, “large”)
