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Technique 19: Controlling When Certain Formats Are Used
negative but also alerts me with bold type and bright
yellow shading if the value exceeds 1,250.

• Figure 19-5: Adding a second condition that applies a
different formatting when the value is
above 1,250.

Finding cells with conditional formatting
Excel makes it easy to locate and select the cells in
your worksheet that use conditional formatting. This • Figure 19-6: Selecting the cells in the worksheet that use
makes it quick work of finding particular conditional conditional formatting.
formatting that you want to reuse by copying to
other parts of the spreadsheet.
Making Your Outstanding
Open the Go To dialog box (F5 or Ctrl+G) and then
click the Special button. Excel opens the Go To Errors Stand Out
Special dialog box (see Figure 19-6) where you select
the Conditional Formats option button and then Although conditional formatting is most useful for
click OK. alerting you to anomalies that crop up in your
spreadsheet data, you can also use it to warn you
Excel then selects all the cells in the worksheet that when certain types of errors crop up that aren’t
contain some type of conditional formatting. You can related to errors in the formulas themselves. For
use the Enter or Tab key or Shift+Enter or Shift+Tab example, you can use conditional formatting to flag
keys to move from one selected cell to another errors in a typical sales table — one that totals the
throughout all the ranges. columns and rows of figures to ensure that the sum
of the column subtotals and the sum of the row
To save time and select only the cells that con- subtotals are always equal to the grand total at the
tain a certain type of conditional formatting, intersection of the two.
position the cell pointer in a cell that uses the
type you want to locate. Then open the Go To Note that the only way the subtotals wouldn’t equal
Special dialog box, select both the Conditional
the grand total is when you or a coworker acciden-
Formatting option button and the Same option tally deletes or replaces one of the SUM formulas
button, and click OK. (See Figure 19-6.)
that calculate a column’s or row’s subtotal. If you