(Excel) Conditional Formatting based on Adjacent Cell Value

40
votes

I'm trying to apply conditional formatting in Excel on a range of cells, based on the adjacent cell's value, to achieve something like this:

Expense Conditional Formatting

The goal is to highlight values in Column B (Actual Expense) red if the value is greater than it's adjacent value in column C (Expected Expense). I've followed a number of tutorials that said to apply conditional formatting by selecting Conditional Formatting>New Rules>Use a Formula to Determine Which Cells to Format then applying a rule =$B4>$C4 which would format the 'Actual' cell red if it were greater than the 'Expected' cell. This works great for one cell, but not so well when I attempt to apply this to a range of cells. I've used the format painter as well as editing the rule to be applied over a range of cells (i.e. $B$2:$B$5) as shown below but it only bases the formatting on the initial formula (if B4 is greater than C4) and everything undesirably turns red. enter image description here

I'd rather not make individual rules for every row. Is there a way to consolidate this into one rule?

2
excelformattingconditional

2 Answers

57
votes

You need to take out the $ signs before the row numbers in the formula....and the row number used in the formula should correspond to the first row of data, so if you are applying this to the ("applies to") range $B$2:$B$5 it must be this formula

=$B2>$C2

by using that "relative" version rather than your "absolute" one Excel (implicitly) adjusts the formula for each row in the range, as if you were copying the formula down

0
votes

I don't know if maybe it's a difference in Excel version but this question is 6 years old and the accepted answer didn't help me so this is what I figured out:

Under Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules:

  1. Make a new rule with "Use a formula to determine which cells to format"
  2. Make your rule, but put a dollar sign only in front of the letter: $A2<$B2
  3. Under "Applies to", Manually select the second column (It would not work for me if I changed the value in the box, it just kept snapping back to what was already there), so it looks like $B$2:$B$100 (assuming you have 100 rows)

This worked for me in Excel 2016.