Excel conditional formatting row if cell starts with

Question

I'm trying to format a row based off a cell within it.

My table runs from A6 to K207 and I want to highlight the row in bold if the cell in B6 starts with SA.

I tested my formula

=IF(LEFT(TRIM(B26),2)="SA","YES","NO") 

in another cell and that works ok - but I can't get the formatting to work for some reason...

I removed the yes/no and placed into a conditional formatting rule applying to my whole table and it doesn't work. Even if I apply it to just a row it doesn't work.

Am I using if statements within conditional formatting right? I've looked on Google and here and have found similar issues but not the same one, they've all used set values/ranges but not a 'starts with' condition.

Answer 1

The conditional formatting is an IF statement by default, and formats depending on whether the formula is TRUE or FALSE therefore an additional IF statement is not needed:

=LEFT($A6,2)="SA"

This will do the trick, apply this to the entire range as needed.

It will test whether all cells in column a start with "SA" and highlight that cell. If it is applied to a range including more columns, the $ sign fixes the column as A so tests that cell and highlights every cell based on that, effectively highlighting the entire row.

You can also use an OR statement to pass multiple arguments like so:

=OR(LEFT($A6,2)="SA",LEFT($A6,2)="BO")

Answer 2

Welcome to SO. When doing conditional formating (CF) in a formula, you need to apply references.

Switch between relative, absolute, and mixed references

Right now your formula is =IF(LEFT(TRIM(B26),2)="SA","YES","NO"). You are using relative references, so the CF rule will check according to their position. In A6 it will check the value of A6, and I guess you would like the rule to check the value always in column B.

So the first fix you need in yor formula will be (it needs more, hold on)

=IF(LEFT(TRIM($B26),2)="SA","YES","NO") 

Now, it will check always the value in column B. But we need to fix something else. To make the CF based on a formula, you need to formulate something that returns a boolean value, True or False. Your values Yes or NO are strings (text), not boolean, so they don't work.

So try this formula and let's see if it works:

=IF(LEFT(TRIM($B26),2)="SA",TRUE,FALSE) 

An IF Functions allows you to make a question where the answer must be yes/no (true/false) and, depending of the answer, Excel will do an option or another.

With CF rule based on a formula, you just need the question itself, you don't need to choose an option. So the short version of this formula, as @Plutian states in his answer, is just doing:

=LEFT(TRIM($B26),2)="SA"

Try to adapt this to your needs.