5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

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How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An

Entire Row In Google Sheets
Conditional formatting is a super useful technique for formatting cells in your Google Sheets
based on whether they meet certain conditions.

In this post, you’ll learn how to apply conditional formatting across an entire row of data in
Google Sheets.

For example, if the continent is “Africa” in column C, you can apply the background formatting
to the entire row (as shown by 1 and 2):

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A template with all these examples is available at the end of this post.

How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire

Row

It’s actually relatively straightforward once you know the technique using the $ sign (Step 5).

Step 1. Highlight the data range you want to format

The first step is to highlight the range of data that you want to apply your conditional format-
ting to. In this case, I’ve selected:

A2:C13

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Step 2. Choose Format > Conditional formatting… in the top menu

Open the conditional format editing side-pane, shown in this image, by choosing Format >
Conditional formatting… from the top menu:

Step 3. Choose “Custom formula is” rule

Google Sheets will default to applying the “Cell is not empty” rule, but we don’t want this here.

Click on the “Cell is not empty” to open the drop-down menu:

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Scroll down to the end of the items in the drop-down list and choose “Custom formula is”. This
will add a new input box in the Format cells if section of your editor:

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Step 4. Enter your formula, using the $ sign to lock your column
reference

In this example, I want to highlight all the rows of data that have “West” in column A. In this
new input box, enter the custom formula:

The key point to understand is that you lock the column you want to base your conditional for-
matting on by adding a $ (dollar sign) to the column reference.

I start inputting the first cell of my highlighted range:

= A2

It’s really important that the row here matches the first row of your highlighted range (e.g. if
your data is A10:C50 then your conditional formatting rule start with A10 too).

Then I add the $ (dollar sign) in front of the A only:

= $A2

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Then I add the test condition, in this case whether the cell equals “West”:

= $A2 = "West"

As the conditional formatting test is applied across each row, the value from the first cell in col-
umn A is used in the check.

To learn more about using the $ sign and understand relative and absolute references, have a
read of this post: How To Use Google Sheets: A Beginner’s Guide

More Examples Of Conditional Formatting Across An Entire

Row

Based on a threshold value

This is a super useful application of this technique, to dynamically highlight rows of data in
your tables where a value exceeds some threshold.

In this example, I’ve highlighted all of the students who scored less than 60 in class, using this
formula in the custom formula field:

= $C2 < 60

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Based on checkboxes

Google Sheets checkboxes are super useful. If you haven't heard of them or used them yet,
you're missing out.

When a checkbox is selected it has the value TRUE, and when it is not selected the cell has
the value FALSE. So we can use that property in our custom formula:

= $B2

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Multi-Condition Examples

AND Example: Highlight Whole Row When Two Conditions Are Both True

Often we want to highlight based on two conditions. In this example, we'll see how to highlight
the entire row when both conditions are true.

Here, we want to highlight all rows with "Apartment" in column B and "Buyer" in column D.

We use an AND Function to do this.

Highlight the dataset and add this conditional formatting custom formula:

=AND($B1="Apartment",$D1="Buyer")

OR Example: Highlight Whole Row When Condition A or Condition B Are

True

This is similar to the previous example, but now we want to highlight rows where either (or
both) of the conditions are true.

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We use an OR Function to do this.

Conditions In Same Column

Firstly, let's see an example where the two conditions can exist in the same column.

We want to highlight all rows with "House" in column B or "Townhouse" in column B. Notice
both conditions in column B.

This is the conditional formatting custom formula we use:

=OR($B1="House",$B1="Townhouse")

Conditions In Different Columns

This time, imagine the two conditions exist in different columns.

For example, suppose we want to highlight all rows with "House" in column B or sales price >
$700,000 in column E.

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Use this rule to achieve this:

=OR($B2="House",$E2>700000)

*** Notice how the rule starts on row 2 this time and is only applied to the data but not the
header row. That's because the condition $E1 > 700000 evaluates to TRUE for the text head-
ing (bizarre!), which we want to avoid.

Three Condition Example

Suppose we want to check for a third condition...

We combine an AND function with an OR function and use brackets to determine the prece-
dence (i.e. the order) that the tests are carried out.

Consider this example:

=OR($B1="House",AND(ISNUMBER($E1),$E1>700000))

The rule will highlight the row when there is either:

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"House" in column B, OR
Column E is a number AND it's greater than $700,000

The two conditions on column E must both be TRUE for the AND to evaluate to TRUE.

This rule is another way to solve the header issue in the previous example.

Conditional Formatting Template

Click here to open a view-only copy >>

Feel free to make a copy: File > Make a copy...

If you can't access the template, it might be because of your organization's Google Workspace
settings. If you right-click the link and open it in an Incognito window you'll be able to see it.

💡 Learn more
Check out my beginner course and master key tech-
niques to become confident with Google Sheets: Google
Sheets Essentials

 February 10, 2022  Ben  Spreadsheets

289 thoughts on “How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An

Entire Row In Google Sheets”

Sue
September 4, 2018 at 4:52 am

Can you conditionally format the rows that do NOT contain “West” in column A?
This is regarding your first example.

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Ben 
September 6, 2018 at 9:49 pm

Hi Sue,

Yes, you can do this by changing the formula to:

= $A2 <> "West"

Cheers,
Ben

Nathalie
March 22, 2019 at 9:32 pm

Hi, I’m learning how to use the “Tasks control” sheet and I need D row and G row to turn,
for example, blue, if the text in D row says “not started” and G row contains a date “before
today”, how can I do that? Can it be done?:(

Sergey
June 19, 2019 at 10:06 am

Hi,
I think this formula works good:
=AND($D1=”not started”,$G1<TODAY())

Jorge Fernandes
December 30, 2020 at 10:59 am

The right formula is:

=AND($D1=”not started”;$G1<TODAY())

Kyrylo Stanchyk
January 2, 2021 at 6:40 am

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Technically both are right. The separator in formula depend on your language and lo-
cal settings. For some it will be ‘;’, others may need to use ‘,’.

Same goes with fraction separator. Some need to write it using a dot ‘0.05’, others —
a comma ‘0,05’.

Parto Barar
November 24, 2021 at 11:11 am

Can you help me too?

I want to color code all rows so that if I enter a date in that rows column V, it turn
blue.
like the whole row change color to blue
is this possible?
I have more than 300 rows, and 29 columns, I want it to be applied to all rows.
and also if there are any formulas for that, can I use it for another column in the doc?
My wanting is this:
1) if column V contains a date turn the related row blue.
2) if column Z contains “approved” turn the related row green, and if Column Z con-
tains ” refesued” turn the related row red.

Y
August 31, 2019 at 6:26 pm

What about multiple text? (eg, if there was a table of data with North, South, East, West in
column A and you want only North and East conditionally formatted?

Thanks!

Nathan Brown
September 18, 2019 at 7:33 am

Use the OR() syntax e.g.

=OR($D1=”north”, $D1=”east”)

Ellen Edmands
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April 7, 2020 at 10:27 pm

Thank you for this! This worked perfectly.

Jennifer Borrelli
March 6, 2022 at 1:44 pm

Is there a way to make the colors automatically sort together after using conditional for-
matting for an entire row.

JP
June 19, 2020 at 9:58 am

If I want to create a formula that identifies changes from three separate columns (A-C) to
the next three columns (D-F). I create a formula that states if “cell D1”!= “cell A1” than
highlight the cell. When I try to make the reference across the entire column (D1:D100), it
will only reference back to the first cell A1. Could you assist in helping me make this more
fluid without having to recreate the formula for every single cell?

Tiffany
July 23, 2020 at 11:18 am

I’m trying to make entire rows a color that have cells that say “Rejected” or “Canceled” in
certain columns (there is an opportunity in 4 different columns to say these words). I can-
not figure out how to do that as “A2” would refer to column A, row 2. I’d like to apply the
rule to the entire column “A”, but it keeps saying invalid. Please help.

Dominik
September 24, 2020 at 2:02 am

You could make 4 conditional statments. One for each column. You could also use and
OR statment

=OR($A1=”Rejected”, $A1=”Canceled”, $B1=”Rejected”, $B1=”Canceled”,

$C1=”Rejected”, $C1=”Canceled”, $D1=”Rejected”, $D1=”Canceled”)

I’m sure there is a more compact way to do it though

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Even
December 29, 2020 at 3:16 pm

Hi, also need a solution like this, but the field is red (as in something wrong with the
code). This goes away when i remove the = at the start, but the expression doesn’t
work. Anyone got any ideas?

Lasse
July 11, 2021 at 7:39 pm

They may have changed the formula. I couldn’t get it to work either, but came up with
this that did work:

=OR($A2=”West”;$A2=”North”)

Abdi
February 13, 2021 at 8:27 pm

Thank Dominik.

This works. But when I change the cell to anything else like not Rejected or Cancelled,
it doesn’t change back the color to stock. Can you help?

Hanna
September 5, 2020 at 2:51 pm

Hello Ben you are genius, thanks a lot

Preema laveena lasrado

October 16, 2020 at 5:23 am

Hi
In a daily reporting sheet, i wanted to highlight entire row based on date(today)

Jordan Worthington

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March 25, 2020 at 10:10 am

What if I want to change want happens in the row, based on activity happening in individual
cells in the same column?

And example would be and order called in, data is entered and the row turns yellow

Then the ordered is pulled, data is entered and the row turns green

Then the order is complete, data is entered, so the row turns another color

Is that possible?

Ean McDonald
May 19, 2020 at 2:42 pm

I have a column where if the cell has an “x” it’ll turn green, and an “*” will turn it red.

I did this with two conditional formatting rules on the same column.

There may be a more boiled down or efficient way to do this though.

John
November 9, 2021 at 3:59 pm

Yes. You will have to add 3 rules to make this happen. Enter the first rule, then click on
“add another rule.” Make sure the red is on top, yellow in the middle, and green on the bot-
tom.
The first rule will be what happens last – order complete turn red. The second rule is order
is pulled turn green. Then the bottom/final rule will be order is entered turn yellow.
This assumes that your cells are blank, then the row knows to turn a color when informa-
tion is entered. It also assumes that you use A1 to enter order information. A2 says that it’s
being pulled. A3 means the order is complete. Highlight your grid starting at A1, use a cus-
tom formula =NOT(IsBlank($A3)) then change the formatting to the color to red.
Then when A1 is filled in, the row will turn red. The next rule will be similar but use the next
row.
=NOT(IsBlank($A2)) is for green. order being pulled.
=NOT(IsBlank($A1)) is for yellow. order entered.

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Marty Rogers
September 7, 2018 at 5:51 am

This is brilliant, thanks so much Ben, you’ve saved me a headache and a quarter!

Ben 
September 7, 2018 at 1:33 pm

You’re welcome! Thanks, Marty.

ALin
June 10, 2019 at 1:35 am

I just want to thank you for this. Normally I don’t spend time…but now I feel to do 🙂

you save me alot of time!

Regards!!

Lucas
September 9, 2018 at 5:29 pm

Hi, is there a way that in step 3 it could be “Cell is not empty”? like i want to if a cell in a col-
umn is not empty the whole row is conditioned…. hope that makes sense, thank you

help yes
November 21, 2018 at 5:33 am

Just use a null field (I think):

=$A2$= “”

Basically if it’s not empty, format the row.

Kimuli
May 29, 2019 at 5:28 pm

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it didn’t work for me. does anybody else know how to format row if cell is not empty in a
given column?

Kevin
July 26, 2019 at 10:24 am

It should work as =$a2=””

Jenn
August 15, 2019 at 11:36 am

This doesn’t work for me. Any other suggestions?

M
September 3, 2019 at 3:10 pm

Maybe try selecting the cell and pressing backspace? I sometimes have to retype
things in order for the conditional formatting I added after it was typed to take hold.

KC
May 8, 2020 at 10:52 am

=$a2>”” should work! The other suggestion highlighted all that are empty for me.

rmfossi
July 8, 2020 at 12:14 pm

Just tried it… and it does work, just not with “copy / paste”. I had to type it all out
and then it worked. I think it was the quotes at the end that didn’t paste elegantly.

m
February 25, 2020 at 12:35 pm

This just does not work for me. I want – if O2 is not empty, highlight row.
=$o2$=”’

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doesn’t work

Ben 
February 25, 2020 at 8:47 pm

You need to use =$O2=""

Grace
December 2, 2020 at 6:44 pm

=$O2″” should work!

Ralph
September 18, 2018 at 7:14 pm

Hi,
Great and helpful post. Is there a way to set several ‘conditionals for the same column? For
instance, I want the entire row to turn green if the text contains ‘go’, or turn red if the text con-
tains ‘stop’ then turn yellow if the text contains ‘caution’.
Also, would I be able to set all these same conditionals in 4 different columns? the same text
is automatically filtered into 4 different columns on the same sheet
Thank you!

Ben 
September 19, 2018 at 9:11 am

Yes, just add multiple rules. The order of the rules in the sidebar determines the order of
precedence (which order they are applied in), although it shouldn’t matter in the case you
describe.

You can use the AND/OR functions in the conditional rule if you need to check multiple
columns.

Ralph
September 19, 2018 at 5:38 pm

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GREAT! Thanks.
May I ask another question?
How do I get the entire row to highlight based on *some* of the text in that cell? For in-
stance the information dropped into every cell [generated by AutoCrat] starts with
“Document created via… [then there are 4 different word that follow ‘created’ – time, form,
manually, starting]. I want the rows to highlight 4 different colors, based on those 4 differ-
ent words]. Thanks again

Gordon Myers
January 24, 2019 at 5:14 pm

You’d probably want to make use of the SEARCH(search_for, text_to_search,

[starting_at]) function. If it’s the third cell in the row that potentially contains the text
you’re looking for, your custom formula might look something like this:

=SEARCH(“text to search for”, $C2)

Charlotte Lewis
April 11, 2019 at 3:24 pm

I did this and it is only highlighting the one cell. I used =SEARCH(“cancellation”,$C1)
and it’s only highlighting the cell and not the row. Any thoughts?

Sydney C
June 1, 2019 at 10:00 pm

Currently looking for this exact thing! If there are any answers, please update soon.

monkeymurf
August 7, 2019 at 1:06 pm

The SEARCH command should, I got it to work just fine.

Perhaps you were not applying it to the entire range. If that still doesn’t work you
could always try
=REGEXEXTRACT($C1,”.*(cancellation).*”)=”cancellation”
it is a roundabout way of getting there but also worked for me.

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Jesse Bachrach
January 15, 2020 at 11:27 am

Oddly, neither of these are working for me:

range: A1:Z359,
custom formula is:
SEARCH(“expensify”, $E1)

OR
REGEXEXTRACT($E1,”.*(expensify).*”)=”expensify”

Any clues as to what I might be doing wrong?

Max
February 19, 2021 at 7:06 am

Maybe try replacing the comma-characters (,) with a semicolon-character (;) , and
use an equal-character (=) in front of the function

So instead of your formula:

SEARCH(“expensify”, $E1)

Try it like this:

=SEARCH(“expensify”; $E1)

For me this syntax change got the functions working for me. It appears that the
location that’s set in Google Sheets determines which syntax you should use for
functions. Among other things, it affects whether you should separate arguments
in formulas by a semicolon or comma character. You should also take note of this
when copying functions from the Google Docs Editor Help.

I found out through this article:

https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/sheets-location/
There’s also a full explanation on why and what gets affected by location regard-
ing syntax

Hope this helps your issue.

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Richard Scroggin
January 20, 2020 at 1:05 am

I think the problem with the SEARCH function is that it’s returning the starting posi-
tion where “cancellation” is found in the cell. I used the MID function in my custom
formula to do what you wanted and it worked great. Try using this:
=MID($C1,1,12)=”cancellation”
where ,1, is the position in the cell to start searching and ,12 is the exact length of
what you’re looking for.

lockhrt
June 22, 2020 at 2:50 am

yes this works fine.

TR
August 24, 2020 at 12:54 am

Awesome, thank you very much! I needed to do this for a project and I’m really an
excel beginner but this formula worked!

Jackie
October 5, 2019 at 8:23 pm

Is there a way to formulate a row so that only one box can be checked in that row?

Colin
September 25, 2018 at 6:12 pm

Thanks for this Ben.

I’m having trouble implementing this strategy.

Are you able to use cell references in your formula as I am trying to do?

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In this case I want to highlight rows only if their values in column C match any of the values in
Column AA:AA.

Example custom formula for range C6:J33 :

$C6= AA:AA

Thanks!

George Lambiw
October 9, 2018 at 8:59 am

This is great stuff. I change the color of the first cell ( contains Date) based on the month…so
all the Sept deals are Red, Oct are Green… using this formula =left(A1,1)=”9″ The “9” is the
first digit of the date.
But….when I hit Nov, Dec, Jan…the formula thinks it’s all the same.
Any suggestions? I just want the first cell to change color.

Chris
October 30, 2018 at 9:59 am

I use a color scale for a field that contains a %. I would like this color scale to apply either the
entire row or just one other cell. I can’t see how to do this.

Marius
December 5, 2020 at 1:32 am

Ben, I have the same issue. Please let us know if there is any possibility to achieve this.
Thanks.

Corie
November 2, 2018 at 8:02 am

Hi, How can I highlight an entire row based on if one column is between two dates?
My column B has dates and I want to highlight the entire row for those rows whose dates (col-
umn B) fall between November 19 and December 9. Thanks in advance for your help!

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Ajay Kumar H
December 4, 2018 at 5:24 am

I want to highlight an entire row if a cell is blank (data not entered)?

Can you help
Thanks in advance

Ben 
December 4, 2018 at 8:39 am

Hey Ajay,

You can do this with Conditional Formatting > Custom formula option and then use a formula
like this:

=$A1=""

where A is the column you’re checking for blanks (can change).

Cheers,
Ben

Jon M
December 14, 2018 at 5:27 pm

What if I want to base the row conditions on a cells data equalling 0?

I tried this, but the blank cells would inherit the conditional formatting as well as the cells con-
taining 0.

Ben 
December 14, 2018 at 8:40 pm

Hey Jon,

One way you could do this is to check for a number in that cell, as well as the 0 check,
something like:

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=and(isnumber($c1),$C1=0)

Or you could check for not blank, like this:

=and($C1=0,$c1<>"")

This assumes your conditional column is column C, and you’re starting on row 1, so you’d
need to adjust them.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,Ben

Josh
December 17, 2018 at 2:12 pm

Ben,

Is this type of conditional formatting able to be done if a particular column is filled in with a
color?

For example, I have football teams in both column C and D. Then in columns F-J people have
picked their winners. If I manually go thru and highlight the winning team in either C or D, can I
use conditional formatting to automatically highlight when people correctly selected the win-
ner, in their respective columns?

Thanks,
Josh

Beth N
December 28, 2018 at 4:09 pm

Hey Ben,

I was wondering if you had a trick that allows a row to be completely highlighted if one cell in
that row has a specific date?

For example, I have ten rows, but only one has a date that is important and I want that whole
row to be highlighted.
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Of course, I want more than one row highlighted, but for an example.

Ben 
December 28, 2018 at 6:06 pm

Yes, you can do that. For example, this formula will format whole row if the date in B2 is
today’s date:

=$B2=today()

whereas this one does a specific date:

=$B2=date(2019,3,19)

You can adjust the column from B to match whatever you’re using for dates.

Hope that helps!

Ben

Teck Heng
April 25, 2019 at 12:23 am

Hi Ben,

Understand that if want to highlight the whole row the formula is this: =$B2=today()
If i want to highlight whole row for dates before today, what is the formula? Thank you!

Rgds,
Lee

Crystal Jones
December 5, 2019 at 9:22 pm

I have this same question. I have a list of coupons and want to cross out the entire line
when the date in B2 is before today. I would also like to remove the expired item after
two days.

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Billy
March 10, 2021 at 6:22 pm

Hi Ben,

Would this NOT work if I am importing the data from another spreadsheet? For some rea-
son that is what is happening to me.

Thanks in advance!

Jessica
January 1, 2019 at 3:53 pm

I have applied the correct formula, however it’s not working/updating.

I have 9 rows (A-J) the row that dictates the formula is D. The formula I have entered is
=$D20=“Pending”

Is this correct?

If so, would you be able to explain why it is not working on google sheets.

Thanks,
Jessica

Ben 
January 1, 2019 at 5:24 pm

Hey Jessica,

This should work if your data starts on row 20. Otherwise you should change the 20 to your
start row e.g. $D2.

Hope that helps.

Ben

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mike littau
January 10, 2019 at 1:43 pm

Is there a way to make the row fill color ‘permanent’? I need to shade certain rows but want to
be able to use the ‘fill handle’. Thoughts?

Jesse
January 19, 2019 at 12:04 pm

Is there a way to change the color of a title cell if any of the check boxes in that row have been
checked(true). For instance Cell “C14 D14 E14” (all one cell) turn green as long as any of the
boxes in F14:N14 are checked(true)? Also a way to make them red (false) until something in
that row is also checked. Thanks!

Gilbert Palau
January 20, 2019 at 4:52 am

I have a value at the row J8 of a number, for example, let’s say 50, then from J9 to J17 I have
values that range from below 50 to above 50. If a value is above 50 I want the cell painted
green and if the value is below 50 i want the cell painted red.

I have been trying to get this to work with the offered drop down for Less than or Greater or
equal than, but I dont get the cell to refresh with the proper color, and was hoping you could
show me other ways to do it, with a custom formula.

Thanks,

Gilbert

carlos delgado
March 7, 2019 at 8:54 am

Gilbert did you get this to work?

SemperInAngaria
June 10, 2019 at 11:51 am

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1) Highlight J9:J17
2) Conditional Formatting –> Custom Formula: =J9J8 – make it green

This will make all cells in your selection which are smaller or equal to J8 red and all cells
which are larger than J8 green.

No need for $ as your example only uses one column

Charles
January 22, 2019 at 6:13 am

Hi Ben,

Very good work. My question, I think complicated, I have a lot of information in columns; ID,
Date, Target, Server, Operator.
I want to highlight an entire row, every time the ID, Target and server are the same (to avoid
duplicates if another operator takes the same ID in other date). It might be possible?

Thanks.

Jeremy Williams
January 23, 2019 at 10:15 am

I want to highlight entire columns where a cell can be found with text starting with “Sat”. Any
ideas?

Jason
May 31, 2019 at 7:43 am

I am also looking for an answer for this but unable to find online. Any help or answer so far?

Felipe
November 15, 2019 at 10:38 am

This isn’t the same formula that is presented above but it basically achieves the same thing
that you want.

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=SEARCH(“Sat”,$A1)

The set up is the same. Highlight the table you want to format. Use a custom formula. $A1
represents the column that is being searched to find what is between the “”

I hope this helps.

Lovisa
March 4, 2020 at 6:02 pm

Hi Jeremy, Felipe, Jason

I’m also trying to highlight a column based on the text in the header row. Any luck finding a
solution?

Lovisa
March 4, 2020 at 6:10 pm

I found it!
Custom formula is =C$4=“Black”

$ after the letter, not before. SO simple

Neil Watterson
January 24, 2019 at 6:56 am

Hi Ben, I have set the custom formula to check against 3 columns all matching and then apply
highlight. This works when I apply the format but then if I delete the data and import different
data it stops working. I have a script to extract data from emails, if the data matches in 3 of the
5 columns I want to highlight it. The code I am using is below, any thoughts?

=COUNTIFS($B$2:$B, $B2:$B, $C$2:$C, $C2:$C,$D$2:$D, $D2:$D)>1

Regards,

Neil

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James
January 25, 2019 at 3:19 am

Hi Ben,

I’m having a little trouble sussing out a formula to highlight a row within a table if the cell in col-
umn G has ANY text / numbers in it – this way the row is highlighted upon completion to aid
with my dyslexia. If the cell is blank, I need it to remain blank.

Can you help please.

Ben 
January 25, 2019 at 8:28 am

Hi James,

Try a formula like

=$G2<>""

where you should change the number 2 to match the first row where you apply the condi-
tional formatting. This rule will highlight all the rows where G is not blank.

Hope that helps!

Ben

Josh
February 13, 2020 at 3:33 pm

Hey Ben,

Using this formula (modified to fit my doc) in Google Sheets is applying it to the row above
the cell with characters in the column.

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So to clarify, formula is now =$L2″”, characters are in cell L11, row 10 is now highlighted.
(including L10)

Is there something I missed?

Michael
March 24, 2020 at 7:24 pm

Try removing your header column from your formula.

“A1:H30” – this gave me the same issue you were expereincing

“A2:H30” – this fixed the issue.

Jackie Beale-DelVecchio
July 1, 2020 at 4:27 pm

Thank you! This helped me get it right!!

Fernando
January 27, 2019 at 3:32 pm

Great article! Is there a way to highlight the row if the information entered in the cell matches
the information from a different column? Basically, I would like the row to get highlighted if the
infomation I just entered in the cell is found in anywhere in a different column.

Thank you in advance!

Fernando

Edna
January 28, 2019 at 9:31 am

Hi Ben,
thanks for this article! very useful!
But I still need your help because I’m facing an issue about conditional formatting for Google
Sheet.

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I need to apply/replicate a customized conditional formatting from another sheet and I can’t
figure out how to do it.

When I copy the rule to another cell it creates a new rule for that cell and also creates a cell
range that I don’t want to.

My formula now is:

=SUMPRODUCT(–(ISBLANK(INDIRECT(“Q1!AZ24:BF24”))=FALSE)) > 0

What I need is that this formula replicates to other cells changing for the range automatically.

(“Q1!AZ25:BF25”))
(“Q1!AZ26:BF26”))
…………..

Any idea how to solve that? I’ve been reading a lot but for now my brain can’t figure out how
to solve it.

Thanks!

JR
January 29, 2019 at 4:28 am

Hi Ben

Can you help me with conditional formatting?

For example
Column A:D, I want to highlight the entire ROW when there’s more than one same value on
Column A

Thanks,
JR

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Anthony
January 30, 2019 at 6:05 pm

Hi Ben,

I am just wondering if the upper() formula works inside the conditional formatting?
I am using this formula =UPPER($C$4:$C) but it won’t apply. Thank you.

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CR
February 6, 2019 at 6:02 pm

Hi Ben!

I have a gantt chart and I’m trying to show coverage in main headers for the gantt chart when
there is a different color cell. So for example,

Row D5:BD7 and I want to highlight row 5 when there is a colored cell in rows 6 and 7. So
let’s assume that row 5 will be orange, and there is orange colored in G6:P6, AM6:AQ6 and
there is orange colored I7:M7, R7:Y7, AG7:BC7.

How do I put in conditional formatting to make this happen in row 5?

Thanks!

Elia Rae
February 7, 2019 at 11:38 am

Hello,

Is there a way to format it so that instead of changing the color of the row, I could actually lock
the row with a certain input?

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I’m trying to make it so if I write “approved” in a specific column that whole row will be locked.

I also am often using filters to change the order of the content and there’s constantly new in-
formation being added so I could just lock for example rows x-z.

Thanks,
Elia Rae

Stephanie Chmielecki
February 7, 2019 at 2:58 pm

I am trying to use the conditional formula = $I2 >0. It’s not working because I2 is also a for-
mula (=if( (D7 + 100) <= today(), "0", "1"))

Does the data in I2 need to be a number?

Alex
February 10, 2019 at 6:56 pm

Hey all,
this is a helpful start, but, does anyone know how to do this if
1) first Column is last names (A-Z)
2) I want to distribute different last names to 6 different users
(i.e. A-E (User 1), F-L (User 2) …etc…)

I started by getting the Last name row to have it’s own conditional formatting to highlight
based on “in between”

Now i want to highlight across THOSE row.

Any ideas?

DLB
February 12, 2019 at 11:55 am

How do you replicate the conditional format to additional rows

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Joe
February 13, 2019 at 1:09 pm

Hello Ben! I’m a researcher at a university and need to have a column with IP addresses to
keep track to make sure the same ones do not show up twice, (to make sure someone isn’t
double dipping on a survey) or if they do, to highlight them. Is this possible? Thank you!

Sara
February 20, 2019 at 6:50 pm

Can you do do two conditions, for example in your example, if it is West and the value is
greater than 500 highlight the entire row

Sophie Jerchower
March 22, 2019 at 2:17 pm

I have this question as well

themountinman
May 10, 2019 at 1:08 pm

Try this:
Apply to range: A3:D20

Format cells if… : Custom formula is =AND(exact(“West”,$A3),$C3>500)

Sean
May 10, 2019 at 1:42 pm

Try the following:

Apply to range: A3:D

Format cells if…:

Custom formula is =AND(exact(“West”,$B3),$D3>500)

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clayton
March 1, 2019 at 10:15 am

How about if the vlookup of a cell against a table of results isn’t found? For example the fol-
lowing works if the value is found (applied to V2:V).

=$V2=vlookup($V2,X:X,1,0)

But this doesn’t work to highlight values that aren’t found

=$V2vlookup($V2,X:X,1,0)

Side question, but do you happen to know why it requires the row designation? Seems like it
would make more sense if it were
=V:V=vlookup($V:V,X:X,1,0). Does the row reference always have to be the first row of the
conditional formatting range? In this case if I change v2 to v3, it doesn’t work right.

Thanks!

Ashwin Kailasnath
March 2, 2019 at 4:40 am

Hi,

Ben, Wanted to put that if a value is within 3% of the cell value of the adjacent cell it should be
highlighted in green. I have put the following formula:
=and(isnumber($D3),0.97*$E3<$D3<1.03*$E3). However it does not work and it also does
not indicate that the formula is invalid. Would appreciate your help in this.

Regards,

Ashwin

themountinman
May 10, 2019 at 1:28 pm

Your formula is close. You just need to break up the second expression into two:

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= AND( isnumber($C3), (0.97*$D3)<$C3, $C3<(1.03*$D3))

It appears that google calc does not support multiple equality operators in a single condition
expression.

Greg
March 3, 2019 at 12:22 pm

Hi Ben,

As a non-developer, this is a great article to help me get started with conditional rules.
However, I’ve been looking do so some more complex formatting and I can’t find any articles
anywhere to help me figure it out.

I’m looking to conditionally format the cells of one column based on the value of cells in an-
other column. For example, in a budgeting sheet: I want to highlight all values in column B that
are greater than their corresponding values in column A.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Greg

themountinman
May 10, 2019 at 1:33 pm

Try the following:

Apply to range: B3:B20

Format cells if…: Custom formula is =$B3=$A2

Thiago
April 22, 2020 at 3:20 pm

That does not seem to work =/

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Thiago
April 22, 2020 at 3:25 pm

Got it to work. It actually needs to be: =$B3=$A$2

Chip Cogan
November 21, 2019 at 4:16 pm

I have a similar question, basically: I want to format column U if it does not equal the corre-
sponding row in column T .

Bettina
March 5, 2019 at 6:58 am

Hi Ben-

I like to apply the conditional formatting of a row (turn colour upon checkbox via
=COUNTIF($A$1, “=TRUE”) but want to apply that to an entire sheet without having to type
this for every single row- how would I do that please? Thanks a lot- B

Florence
March 6, 2019 at 4:50 am

Hi!

I was able to apply conditional formatting on a specific data using this custom formula:
=$D:$D=”2019-02-25″

Do you have any suggestions how I can add another date into the formula?

Matthew Lynam
April 3, 2019 at 9:56 pm

You can use the OR operator, so in your case it would be something like this:

=OR(D:D=”2019-02-25″, D:D=”2019-04-03″)

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Mike M.
March 7, 2019 at 5:15 pm

Hi Ben, great article! Thanks for sharing. I have one question, which is proving difficult for me,
but likely easy for you.

I need to hide an entire row based on conditional formatting. For example, if the date in col-
umn 3 falls within the next 14 days I want that entire row to be visible, but if it’s prior to today
or more than 14 days in the future, I’d like the entire row hidden. Can that be accomplished?
Thanks again!

Angela
March 12, 2019 at 9:21 pm

How do I highlight the entire row if I choose text from different columns.

boardtc
March 24, 2019 at 8:58 am

Thanks for the article,

My use case is one that I’m surprised there is not a built in option.
I would like the frozen cells in the row (my current example has 2 frozen columns), highlighted
when any cell in the row is active. Indeed highlighting the entire row would be ok too!
I’ve seen https://www.thesmallman.com/blog/2016/9/15/auto-highlight-the-active-row-when-a-
cell-is-selected on hwo to do in excel but I can;t get working in sheets. Does a anyone have
any tips?

Gabrielle
March 26, 2019 at 5:59 am

Hi, can a formula be used to create a condition for the checkbox where it shows and hides
specific columns, if checked?

Matthew Lynam
April 3, 2019 at 9:53 pm

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Not the way you’re thinking but you can make it so when a given checkbox is checked
(when the cell value is TRUE) then you can set the foreground and background colors to the
same color for a given range (or specific columns within that range).

Arrie
April 1, 2019 at 10:02 am

Banging my head against the wall.

How can I simply highlight a row if text in column D starts with “14.”?

Matthew Lynam
April 3, 2019 at 9:41 pm

Select column D, go to Format -> Number -> Plaintext. Then select the part of the spread-
sheet that includes the text you are looking for in column D, spread out to the width that you
want to highlight horizontally. Go to Format -> Conditional formatting… The range you se-
lected should already be indicated in the Apply to range input. Under Format rules, change
the dropdown to Custom formula is, and then type the following:

=REGEXMATCH($D1, “^14\.”)

where the “1” in “$D1” is the starting row referenced in the Apply to range. That should do it.

Alisa
April 4, 2019 at 9:58 am

Hello,

This isn’t working for me and I’m not sure why.

I want a row to use gray text if the entry in column B is the same as any previous entries. I set
the Apply to range as A3:G and set custom formula as =countif($B$3:$B3,B3)>1

Only column A is being conditionally formatted – not the whole row. What am I doing wrong?

SDN
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April 5, 2019 at 4:56 pm

Thanks Ben

This was my custom formula and it worked for me :

=$A1=”>”

regards
S

kat
April 10, 2019 at 5:42 am

can i use conditional formatting to say the number 2 = ‘west’.

right now I know how to say ‘west’ is marked with the colour green, but i want the number 2 in
collum a4 to make the word west appear in collum a5

Joe
April 10, 2019 at 2:08 pm

I have two columns I’m trying to format similar to what you’ve shown. But I’m looking to have
them highlight only when two specific conditions in each column are met.

For example, If the first column says “Yes”, there will be no highlighting, and if it says “No”,
that is the first check mark that it needs to be considered for highlighting.

Then if the 2nd column has choices for numbers 1-4, and only if the number is “3”, then both
columns will highlight. If it’s any other number, neither column highlights.

Is what I’m describing possible with Google Sheets? Let me know if I need to clarify anything.

Thank you!

Erika
April 17, 2019 at 7:39 pm

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Hi Ben and repliers!

I want to check a cell against a master cell within that same row, and highlight the cell if it
matches.
So, instead of using a custom formula in conditional formatting to look for one value
(=$B1=”YES”) I want it to search for an exact match in the text (but not change the value of
the cell, just the color).
Basically: “if the text value in the cell B1 is exactly the same as this cell, change the color of it.”
Is that possible? Thanks!

Raymond Tanada
April 24, 2019 at 10:49 pm

Really interesting formulas for my conditional formatting. Is it possible to high an entire row,
based from the content of a cell. Sample cell is “4/4/2019 Total”. I want all cells that contains
the word “Total” will be highlighted the row.

Adrian Phan
April 25, 2019 at 12:56 pm

thank you very much Ben!

Margaret
April 26, 2019 at 2:57 am

What if I want the row to be hidden?

For example, if =$A=TRUE , then hide row
If this is possible, what about clearing the row first??

Junior
April 30, 2019 at 12:43 pm

How would I conditional format my rows to offset color. I just want my rows to go dark, light,
dark, light without having to highlight ever other row to manually change the color. Any advise
on this?

Ben 

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April 30, 2019 at 2:56 pm

Hi Junior,

You can use the Alternating Colors option under the Format menu to do just that 🙂

Cheers,
Ben

Deepu Devan
May 7, 2019 at 5:45 am

Hi,

Is there any way where i have five columns and the formula should check if all the five rows
are entered. Even if any one column is not entered it should not allow to enter the entire row.

Thanks in advance.

Luke
May 14, 2019 at 11:50 pm

How do you check between two values:

For example I tried this:

=AND($I3>J3, $I3<J4)

Basically the conditional formatting should check to make sure that the value in Column I is
greater than J3 but less than J4. But it doesn't work. Does anyone know how to get this to
work – between two values?

Tama
May 15, 2019 at 11:15 am

I have a spread sheet that in column A4:A34 date/day is linked to a month in a merged row
1,2/column B and a year in row 2 column CP. I want to highlight rows that have Saturday and

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Sunday in them. I want the rows to move with the weekends. I know it needs to be conditional
but unsure of what the formatting would look like. Please help.

Thank you

Leander
August 27, 2019 at 11:52 am

Select the A4 till CP34, then

Format > Conditional formatting > Custom formula is > =weekday($A4, 2) > 5

Set the formatting is prefered

This should work

tracey
May 20, 2019 at 4:49 pm

hi
if i wish to colour any cell that has a number greater than 0 after todays date – how would I do
that – the dates are in A and the numbers are in GHJK

Avi W
May 28, 2019 at 2:57 pm

Very helpful article!

Strangely, this worked for most of my rows but not all of them. Has anyone experienced that?

Joanna
May 31, 2019 at 1:01 pm

Any way to to a conditional formatting for a whole row based on data validation drop down? I
want to have a row with a client record change color upon changing the value in drop down
menu; ie: change row to red if client marked as inactive and change row to green if client
marked as a good lead. Any ideas?

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BENJAMIN BLUE
June 1, 2019 at 1:29 pm

Hi and thank for for this – how do i use “text contains” in the custom formula instead of an ex-
act text match? In relation to your first example?

Thanks!

Zsolt
July 31, 2019 at 10:31 am

I would like to know the same

Cat
August 21, 2019 at 9:21 pm

I would also like to know if this is simply not possible, so I can stop searching. Thanks!

Stephen
September 3, 2019 at 2:11 pm

I was looking for the same. Figured out you can with the search function in the custom for-
mula is section. If you’re looking to highlight any row that contains the letter “X” in column
A:

=search(“X”,$A2)

Just make sure to set the range for how far you want to highlight in the the row.

Example: Range set to “A2:E100” to highlight the row as far as column E

Hope this helps

Maysoon Soliman
June 2, 2019 at 6:13 am

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Hello, I need to use conditional formatting as if the cell is repeated to change its colour, can I
do that? if yes, how?

Marti
June 20, 2019 at 9:29 pm

I am trying to put a border on the bottom of every row where column A contains a date that
begins with “Sunday.”

I have searched through how to add a border to a row based on some factors, but can not find
an example where the border for the row would be triggered when a certain column cell con-
tains a certain word, but not just that certain word.

Ben 
June 21, 2019 at 8:43 am

Hi Marti,

Unfortunately you can’t control the borders with conditional formatting. You would have to
write some Apps Script code to do this, using the Border class
(https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/slides/border). Maybe I can do this as
a future blog post…

Cheers,
Ben

Shay Capehart
March 7, 2022 at 9:25 am

This just may be some quirk, but it appears that if you import an Excel file that has condi-
tional border formatting, Google Sheets will keep that functionality. I was following the work
on this page (https://www.excelcampus.com/functions/total-rows-dynamic-arrays/) and im-
ported the sample Excel spreadsheet into Sheets. Take the first sheet, for example. You’ll
need to make adjustments to the arrayformulas to see the original functionality, because
they don’t get imported correctly from Excel.

But to see the conditional border formatting in effect, type “Total” in any cell below L5,
which contains “Order Date” currently. The “Totals” row becomes a shade of green and
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top/bottom borders appear. Is this a new Google Sheets feature already?

Sara Victor
June 21, 2019 at 2:07 pm

Hello brilliant minds!

I am looking for a formula where one cell will turn one of two colors depending on the info in
corresponding cells. Case example: I am using a spreadsheet to collect info for contracting,
and on the far left is a status column where someone can indicate they want me to send the
offer. If they select “Send Offer” and not all the cells that need values have them, I want that
cell and the ones missing data to turn red, so they know there is missing info. If they select
“Send Offer” and all the cells that need data have it, then it turns green and the person knows
the data is complete and ready to go.

I’ve seen this in a document before but can’t emulate it. Any takers? 🙂 Thank you!

Ami
June 25, 2019 at 9:25 am

Hi,

I want to highlight rows based on the value in a column.

Say if column H has value apple i need it to be colored red.
If H has value berry i need it to be colored blue.
If H has value grapes i need it to be colored green.
But that all these happen in the same set of cells.
Also if any of them are changed then I need the colors also to change accordingly.
Please help me out…….please please please 🙁

Blair
July 3, 2019 at 11:35 am

How do I do this where I want cells who are marked in a formula to be made a certain color.
So I’m adding cells for one forumla that I want marked blue. I’m adding different cells for a
second formula tha tI want marked green. Basically what’s the formula for “if in a formula”
Thank you!

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Oleksandra
July 8, 2019 at 7:36 am

Hi Ben! Thanks for the useful article.

I just wanna know – can I somehow apply conditional formatting rules on a whole document?
(not only the sheet it was created on).

Thanks!

Alenka
July 12, 2019 at 3:55 am

Hi Ben!

Do you also have a solution on how to highlight entire columns? I excel, the formula is
=C$4=“Black”
But how do you do this in google sheets?

Thank you so much.

Marcus
July 15, 2019 at 1:43 am

Sorry to bother you but I can’t figure out how to use conditional formatting for a row/column
cell based on the value of a previous cell.

Eg. I have weight (numbers) displayed in a row. I would like to highlight cells which if are less
as compared to the previous cell as green, red if their value is more and neutral if the value is
the same.

100|99|101|101|85

So ideally

100|99 (Green)|101 (Red)|101 (Yellow)|85 (Green)

Carolina

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July 22, 2019 at 7:08 pm

Hello, I need the same help as Marcus. How can I format a cell to get colored only if the value
in it is bigger than another cell? For example, turn J4 yellow if its value is bigger than I4.
Than yhou very much for your help.

Claudio
July 25, 2019 at 2:59 pm

Hi Ben

You seem very clued up, this might be a long shot but let’s see if you can help me:

I created a price list with all my suppliers prices so all I do is input the quantity and it works out
the prices and so on…quite a normal thing, so what I’m trying to do is for the row that has a
quantity in it I would like to copy that whole (horizontal) row into the next sheet so when I look
at the next sheet I can see only the rows that I need to see for that specific quote, summing it
all up after the last row in the new sheet.

This is probably an easy one (I hope) this way I can just print the next sheet and insert it in the
client’s file which will only be 1 sheet of paper and not 10 with lots of useless entries.

Let me know if you don’t understand

TIA
Claudio

Abhay
July 29, 2019 at 8:05 am

I want to use conditional formatting in google sheet such that if I write – P KRCA 10-07 and hit
enter, the data in same cell should now appear as P KRCA 10-07 21-07 (added 11 days to ini-
tial date).
Similarly if I write CC KRCA 03-07 and hit enter, the data in same cell should now appear as
CC KRCA 03-07 01-08 (added 30 days to initial date).
Thanks

Sam

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August 1, 2019 at 9:32 am

This is exactly what I needed. Many thanks, Ben.

Janet Sample
August 5, 2019 at 11:26 pm

I am writing a form for educational lessons plans. IF I have the SAME lesson standards for a
consecutive day, I want to skip having to re-answer questions. I have a column in SHEETS to
give a true/false logical answer from whether or not the lesson is a “repeat” or not of the previ-
ous day.
If the conditional formatting is “true” is there a way to have cell information copied from spe-
cific cells in the previous line ?

ADITI
August 8, 2019 at 12:49 am

Hello there,

I would like to know how to apply two conditional formattting rules simultaneously. Currently i
have two two applied on the same range of data, but the cells where first rules holds true, the
second rule is not getting applied.
Thanks.

ANAICTE GONZALEZ BORRELL

August 8, 2019 at 5:46 pm

If column C content is YES or NO, is there a conditional format that I can use to get a number
in column D, like: If C8=YES, then D8=1?

Becky Lieb
August 9, 2019 at 10:11 am

Hi! Thank you fore this very clear explanation as to how to highlight whole rows based on the
value in one cell in that row. It was very helpful!

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

I got it to work and highlight the row based on the value of one cell being less than a certain
cost, but I can’t figure out how to high light the row based on the cell being between two costs
or in a range of two costs.

Ex: Worked = Highlighted row based on the cost in one cell being less than $25,000.

Ex: Didn’t Work = Highlighted row based on the cost in one cell being between $25,001 –
$50,000.

Any advice?! Thanks again!

Oleksandr Zalishchuk
August 16, 2019 at 6:22 am

Could you, please, advise how to use more than one word in the formula, e.g. “West”, “East”
etc.

I tried “West|East”, “West;East” but it didn’t work.

Thank you in advance!

Ben 
August 16, 2019 at 12:25 pm

Assuming you’re looking in column B, try this:

=OR($B1="West",$B1="East")

Oleksandr Zalishchuk
August 19, 2019 at 1:20 am

It worked! Thank you for your advice.

Jeppa
August 20, 2019 at 4:47 am

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

how to —->

when i strike through a sentence, then the box will change color to blue.

Scott
August 23, 2019 at 1:46 pm

I have a list with one column having either Yes or No. I want to color the rows with No in gray.
When I use this formula (=$D2=”No”), it is selecting random rows, some with Yes and some
with No and leaving some rows with No un-grayed.

Any idea what is throwing off the formatting?

Ben 
August 24, 2019 at 6:43 pm

Hey Scott – check that the range you’re highlighting for the conditional formatting is starting
on row 2… if it’s not then it throws off your highlighting. You can adjust the $D2 to $D3 or
$D4 or whatever you need to match your start row.

Marcelo Diniz
August 24, 2019 at 2:23 am

How do I paint the entire row of the active cell?

For example, clicking on a cell would paint the entire row.

Lidor
August 27, 2019 at 7:20 am

Hi,
I have a table that I want to color all Blank cells only if the first cell on the row (A1, A2,A3…) is
not empty. (meaning I don’t want to apply the condition for blank cells for the whole sheet, be-
cause then the whole sheet is colored although I didn’t write anything in the row).

alex
August 27, 2019 at 8:13 pm

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

Hi

How can i color the whole row only if i have 9 checkboxed true ?
for example A2:I2 is all true, then apply the CF , is there is any emptu just leave it unpaint ?

Thanks!

Ben
September 18, 2019 at 9:15 am

This was a huge help! I’ve actually wondered for years how to do this, and just quietly ac-
cepted that it probably wasn’t supported. Your step-by-step tutorial was amazing.

Ben 
September 18, 2019 at 1:24 pm

Great! You’re welcome 🙂

Marcy
October 11, 2019 at 3:04 am

Hi Ben,

I read all but i could not figured out,

I have 2 tables in one google sheets,

e.g 1st table: B2:E10

2nd :I2:L10
When i put number or any datas on B2, on opposite I2 has to be highlighted. If i fill the C5,
J5 has to be higligted.

How can i do this, it should be something regarding with =$G2><"" formula which you
mentioned above before but i could not find it,

Many thanks in advance,

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

j Friedman
September 22, 2019 at 8:58 am

I’m trying to make rows change when a value changes, but I want all the same values grouped
together.
It’s a list of addresses, so based on the building number, the format should change
So all building 3 should be shaded then all building 5 should be unshaded then all building 6
shaded then 7 unshaded, etc; I can’t do odd/even because some of the numbers don’t exist,
so there might be two odds or evens next to each other…
Alternatively when the building number changes I could do a line, but I don’t see lines as a for-
mat option

Jay
September 26, 2019 at 3:21 pm

Hi
I have rows with Date, Time, Email1, Email2, Email3
I want to highlight the email if the email is used more than once for the dame date and time. Is
this possible?

Skyla
September 27, 2019 at 1:54 pm

Hello!
I want to highlight a row if one column is empty but other columns in that row are filled. Can I
do this?

Kate
September 28, 2019 at 6:05 am

Thanks for the tip!

Alvin
October 1, 2019 at 2:22 am

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

Hi, is there a way to filter rows that contains multiple specific texts? like for example, I want to
filter texts that contain “.ru”, “.uk” “.eu” etc.. so that I can select/filter them out on my list when-
ever I wanted to.

junila
October 3, 2019 at 11:09 am

hi how can i condition a entire column to color depending on the value of another column
which it is aligned to? example current qty of stock will turn red if the restock point inputed be-
side it is a certain number?

Allan
October 3, 2019 at 3:49 pm

Can you conditionally format the rows that do NOT contain “anything” in column A?

Jill
October 3, 2019 at 11:14 pm

Hi. I’m managing a google sheet attendance record and I want to conditionally format each
student (1 row) to highlight three absences in a row. Now the absences can be coded N, V, I,
C which are all unexcused and any combination of 3 these in a row would need to be high-
lighted. Thanks!

John
October 4, 2019 at 11:07 am

It works well. Thanks for sharing =)

SaQuoyah
October 8, 2019 at 4:37 pm

What if I want rows B and C to change when D is changed to cancelled? I can get row D to
change but not the others. (rows 15-29).

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

Marcy
October 9, 2019 at 2:13 am

Hi,

I read all but i could not figured out,

I have 2 tables in one google sheets,

e.g 1st table: B2:E10

2nd :I2:L10
When i put number or any datas on B2, on opposite I2 has to be highlighted. If i fill the C5, J5
has to be higligted.

How can i do this, it should be something regarding with =$G2><"" formula which you men-
tioned above before but i could not find it,

Many thanks in advance,

Russell Michael Streff

October 9, 2019 at 4:01 pm

I have a Gantt chart with a task bar highlighted based on a date range. However, I’m trying to
also highlight the same area based on a date range of the days completed. When I add a sec-
ond condition on the range with the adjusted date range nothing happens. Any ideas?? Here
is my text:

TASK
Range:
N8:ABP1002
Formula:
=and(N$7>=$F8,N$7=$F8,N$7<=$H8)

Joseph Vossler
October 10, 2019 at 9:59 am

Hi,

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

I’ve been trying to conditionally format based off a percentage that I manually input, specifi-
cally in terms of investment rates. For some reason, I con’y get the appropriate row to high-
light based off of what rate percentage I’ve input.

See my Google Sheets link with more details:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I77UfKwCeqEf7ecKij4PKyweWbD-
tvgCdipK3HEJqvY/edit?usp=sharing

Any suggestions?

nh
October 16, 2019 at 2:13 pm

I would like to create a new row if a particular text is selected in a column.. Is that option possi-
ble in google sheets.

David
October 25, 2019 at 3:00 am

Hi ben, thanks,
what I don’t get yet, from both the article and “field-test” is how (and why) does this apply to an
entire row.

I replicate the same example and when the checkbox checked, the entire range changes i’s
color…

Lara Thompson
October 29, 2019 at 3:45 pm

I want a row to change color if a checkbox is checked (TRUE) in a certain column. I have done
everything but it only will change the color of the cell and not the row.
What am I doing wrong?
Choose Range
Format rule “is equal to”
TRUE
Style – changed color

HELP
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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

Gina
December 5, 2019 at 12:56 pm

Ben, all super helpful tips, thank you.

Is there a way to format all NEW rows in a particular column with 2 decimal spaces?
And all NEW rows in a particular column to format the #s as currency?

I could not figure out a way to do that.

Can anyone help?

Gina

Liam Holmes
December 16, 2019 at 9:20 am

This is great. Thank you!

Josh Fialkoff
December 16, 2019 at 10:41 am

This is a great post, Ben!

I am having a problem with a conditional formula on a to-do sheet. My goal is to have the row
be shaded and crossed out if I have marked it as done.
However, as you can see in this screenshot, row 129 is not styled even though there’s an x in
F129 and row 134 is styled even though there is nothing in the F134:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/krqhxg32r9qwyof/gtd%20to%20do%20system%20%E2%80%94%
20sheets%202019-12-16%2010-38-44.png?dl=0
I have tried removing all conditional formatting and starting over, but it doesn’t work.
I look forward to your recommendations!
Thanks,
Josh

Tami Bakker
January 9, 2020 at 9:04 pm

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I have 2 columns that I’m trying to keep the duplicates between both columns. Those dupli-
cates in each of those columns I need to keep the adjacent cells in each of the rows to those
columns. How do I eliminate the cells that don’t have duplicates in both those columns along
with those adjacent cells in those rows??

Rahul Nath
January 10, 2020 at 7:54 am

Hi Ben,

This is a great post.

I am having a case like i want to use in between color heat map on the basis of percentage
color condition over actual value.
Example:
A
Jan-500
Feb-600
Mar-300
Apr-650 (Base Month)

Condition is:
– Condition 1: If Apr-Jan difference percentage is in-between (-10% to 10%) then the actual
table which mentions above shows RED color.
– Condition 2: If Apr-Jan difference percentage is in-between (11% to
30%) & (-30% to -11%) shows Ambur color.
– Condition 3: If Apr-Jan difference percentage is in-between (-100% to
-31%) & (31% to 100%) shows Green color.

After meeting with the above condition we will apply to all the tables.
If you can solve this on google app script also it will work for me.

Please Ben or anyone help me to resolve this issue.

Regards,
Rahul

Collin
January 10, 2020 at 10:23 am

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This is very helpful! I have a Google Sheet with 3 columns of checkboxes and I’m trying to
program it so that if all 3 columns in the same row are checked (=True) the entire row turns
green. I’ve made that work for just 1 check box, but now I’m struggling with the “AND” func-
tion. Any help?

=COUNTIF($G1, “=TRUE”) is what I used for just one checkbox, how should I convert it to use
AND?

Debra
January 13, 2020 at 9:59 am

Hi Ben, thanks so much for your skills, teaching and insights. I am new to Google Sheets and
have a problem I am hoping you can help me with. I need to set up formatting for rows with
certificate dates. I am trying to use conditional formatting to notify me of when a certificate is
out of date, ie being notified when a certificate is 11 mths out of date – (giving me 1 mth to
chase the person) to ensure their certificate is always less than 12 mths old. I am able to put
in a fixed date ie 12 mths from today, but it needs to be 12 mths from the date of the certifi-
cate… I do hope this makes sense. Thanks in advance. Debra

wayne jordan
January 22, 2020 at 4:20 pm

Hey! Thanks for sharing the info! But I got 1 quick question.

I wanna use “Conditional Formatting” to highlight specific information on my sheet. My ques-

tion is, is it possible to use “Conditional Formatting” and have it act like a “Vlookup/Hlookup”
formula?

A Reply would be highly appreciated

Shanna
January 24, 2020 at 12:16 am

How about this:

If column O is a date more than 1 year old, color green.

If column N has a value, color white
If J has a value, color white.
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How do I get the white rules to override the green?

To put it another way, I want to see the people who owe dues. Col O is 2019 dues, col N is
2020 dues, col J is no dues.

Stan Hetterscheid
January 24, 2020 at 7:36 am

Hi Ben

Thanks for sharing!

I was also wondering how to disable the ability to fill in a certain colomn if another specific
colomn is not filled in yet.
Is this possible?

Maria
January 24, 2020 at 12:42 pm

I can’t figure out a good way to ask this without presenting the example, so here goes.

On my spreadsheet, I want columns B and C to turn a certain color if the value in column E is
one of two specific values. This is the formula to change an individual row:

Range: B5:C5
Formula: =OR($E5=”x”,$E5=”-“)

I’ve already figured out how to apply multiple ranges to a single formula, so is there a variable
I can insert into the formula in place of the row number so that it will automatically match the
row of the the range? Like, say:

Range: B5:C5,B6:C6,B7:C7,etc.

Formula: =OR($E#=”x”,$E#=”-“), where # represents a variable to auto-fill the row of the range
into the formula.

Maria
January 24, 2020 at 1:02 pm

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Nevermind, I figured it out. For anyone else who needs the information….

Range: B:B,C:C

Formula: =OR($E:$E=”x”,$E:$E=”-“)

Pingback: Missing Google Analytics Transactions? Here are the solutions

Lisa Rowand
February 4, 2020 at 8:45 pm

Hi Ben,

I am looking to add conditional formatting to an entire column that will colour the cells if the
value in the cell is greater than the value in the cell to the left of it. Is there a way to do this all
at once, or do I have to add the conditional formatting to each individual cell?

Here is an example of what I mean:

Column 1 Column 2
Row 1 23 35
Row 2 54 51
Row 3 35 56
Row 4 63 66
Row 5 14 10

In this sheet, the 35, 56, and 66 in Column 2 would all be coloured as their value is greater
than the value of the number in Column 1 of the same row.

I am hoping that there is a faster way to do this than conditionally formatting each cell
individually.

Thanks!

Lisa

Arturo Stable

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February 13, 2020 at 5:34 am

This was exactly what I was looking for. Excellent content and great presentation. Thank you
very much!

Nichi
February 18, 2020 at 1:04 pm

I am looking to have cells C:Q highlight red if they are less than the number in column B. I
know how to do it for a single row (=C20:Q20<$B$20), but I have several rows I need to do
this for. Do I have to go through one by one changing the row number in the formula or is
there a quicker way?

Andre Kano
February 19, 2020 at 7:25 am

Hi Ben, great content here. Can you help me further?

I’m trying to apply the following to 164 consecutive rows: format if the cell has the lowest value
in its row.
I can do that manually, row per row, but I’m wondering if I can do that to the entire spread-
sheet at once. Thanks!

Andrew
February 28, 2020 at 1:51 pm

Say I have A1:A10 formatted to turn Red if A11=0. How can is put that on rows B – Z without
having to set each row up.

When I copy & paste or drag I get the other rows looking at A11. Want them to look at their
corresponding 11.

Jen Jolls
April 13, 2020 at 12:50 pm

This information is so valuable. I truly, truly appreciate it!

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5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

I have another inquiry about Conditional Formatting a row…

Let’s say I want to use Google Sheets for Attendance Purposes in a school:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GIe-
gQV8mGGTStMO4RT2rf44XL4_T3snXgFm5iQKKBI/edit

I want a conditional formatting that would highlight a row in YELLOW if a student has been ab-
sent 3-4 days in a row. And then highlight the row in RED if the student has been absent 5+
days in a row.

How should I proceed?

Allan
April 13, 2020 at 8:06 pm

Hi. I need help with conditional formatting for a sheet; I have a list of addresses on an array,
table, etc. It needs a cell formatted (whatever formatting) depending on the state that I’m trying
to find and highlight (e.g. NJ).

Nicholas Pfeiffer
April 18, 2020 at 5:15 pm

If I want to turn the whole row red if the text in a single column is not “Tom” how do I do that?

Sean Power
April 29, 2020 at 7:20 am

= $A2 “Red” will do it – change the cell to the which ‘Tom’ does or doesn’t appear in

Sean Power
April 29, 2020 at 7:22 am

Sorry, that should be:

= $A2 = “Tom”

Amir fradi

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April 24, 2020 at 4:29 pm

So for the example for the students I would like to add an extra to each student is there a way
of doing it where all the students score will go up by example 10 points (ex from 65 to 75)

Vishweshwar
April 27, 2020 at 6:36 am

In my excel sheet in the middle of the row I have totals and shows likes April Total, May Total,
June Total. In this case How to format the entire row which contain the text “Total”.

Sean Power
April 29, 2020 at 7:19 am

Does this only work when you are the owner of the Sheet? I have a Sheet owned by an exter-
nal contact which I have edit rights to. Adding the formula to the Sheet doesn’t change the for-
matting of the row, but taking a copy of the Sheet so I have ownership does initiate the
change.

Holly L Harris
May 15, 2020 at 11:46 am

I am having difficulty writing a custom formula for a Reading Lexile. I need to be able to export
data from another source to paste into my Google Sheet and have it conditionally format
based on a specific criterion. For example I need it to color the cells in the column RED if the
value is less than “195L” (195 Lexile). I tried the formula: =$AI4<"195L"
The problem though was that is did not catch every value less than 195. There were specific
values like "90L","70L", "25L", "20L" and so on. It appeared that it did not catch anything less
that or equal to 100L. But then randomly I noticed it caught "15L" and "0L". Go figure! I won-
dered if maybe I needed change the format of the text to something more specific other that
"Automatic" or "Plain Text", but that did not fix it.
So in addition to that criterion I also needed to identify any value that has "BR" in it, which
means "below reading level". For example, "BR225L". I figured out how to identify it just using
the "Contains text" option, but my worry is that it will not catch every BR for other collegues
that will be using this data template. Any suggestions???
PLEASE HELP!
~From a desperate teacher!

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Louis
May 15, 2020 at 4:15 pm

Hi,
I would like to highlight the specific cell when the data in is between 0.9*(another cell in the
same row) and 1.1*(another cell in the same row). It has worked for one cell, but how do I
make the formula work for the whole column? I have used turn green if value is between
=J5*0.9 and =J5*1.1 but when i drag down I would like it to be =J6*0.9 and =J6*1.1, rather
than ‘value is between =J5*0.9 and =J5*1.1’ again. I have over 400 rows so I can’t format
each one. Any way to get around this would be very much appreciated.

Joe Davey
May 22, 2020 at 10:28 pm

Is there a way to reference from another sheet? I’m trying to reference my roster of players
(fantasy football) from one sheet and have it highlight those players on my rankings sheet.

This was waaaaaaaay more helpful than Google’s site. Thank you!

Vincent Alcantara
May 26, 2020 at 9:55 pm

Hi! What to do if I want to highlight in red font all the numbers that are lower than the previous
cell in a column? i.e.
A1
747
388
411
795
876
689

Aaron Elswick
June 2, 2020 at 11:55 am

I want to highlight any row that has an S in column 0 and a Y in column P in two colors green
and purple. The formula below will not work.

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=AND($O4:$O168=”S”,$P4:$P168=”Y”)
applies to =$A$4:$V$168

Sia
June 11, 2020 at 10:30 am

I need to highlight an entire row in Google Sheets if a cell contains a date before 5/31/2020…

Nilesh Jeram
June 26, 2020 at 9:53 am

HI I have an excel sheet where I have a drop down list that changes the color of a row. This is
based on if people have booked a patient. What I need is to use the same conditional format-
ting for each row, so that I can copy the formula rather than creating a conditional formula for
each row. Any ideas?

Mohammad
July 5, 2020 at 2:39 am

Hello,

I want to highlight the cell in an entire column if the value is greater than another cell’s value
from another column.
Please advise how can I do it in Excell conditional formating?

Thank You,
Mohammad

Janel
July 8, 2020 at 12:04 am

Please Help
=OR($C1=”West”,$C1=”East”)
this only trace the exact West or East word

How if the name is Wild West / Green West Statue / Right East / East Gate etc…
how to modify the formula to trace the West word or East and add South and North word to

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trace it in the whole C column even if its not exact title.

Please help Thank you in advance!

Janel

Siebe
July 9, 2020 at 6:42 am

What if I want to apply conditional formatting if none or more than one checkbox is ticked. Out
of four check boxes, I only want to click one and not more. Is there an option to do this?

TJ Kelly
July 23, 2020 at 9:55 am

Apologies if I missed this covered in a previous comment, but how do you apply this to the
whole sheet?

My conditional formatting formula says =$A10=”Students” and it works great on A10:Z10.

How do I get this formula to repeat and run on every row?

Marie
July 28, 2020 at 4:29 pm

2 years later, this post keeps saving lives. Thank you!!

Adrian
August 7, 2020 at 7:10 pm

Hi guys. I’ve tried to find my solution here with no luck.

I need columns E-K highlighted when Column F has the exact word “Gold” but only for that
row.
So basically I have Colors either “gold” or “Silver” in Column F and if it is gold, I want all col-
umns to the right of Column F highlighted for that row.

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Hope that make sense.

Thanks for any help. 8)

Anthony Del Balso

August 15, 2020 at 2:34 pm

Love this tip, and found a lot of help in the comments, thanks Ben and community!. One more
tip I discovered, I was setting row formatting based on a date value check against today’s
date, AND when a value in another cell existed.

I believe I found a bug.

I can use both of these independently in the custom formula with correct formatting results:
$A2<TODAY()
$B2

The second check reports as TRUE when the cell has a value.

If I combine those into an AND statement it doesn't format properly.

AND($A2<TODAY(),$B2)

But when I flipped the check for a value to be not equal to empty it worked perfectly.
AND($A2<TODAY(),$B2″”)

Am I missing something?

Chelsey
August 18, 2020 at 9:02 am

I am trying to have a row change colour ONCE a date is entered (doesnt matter what the date
is just that a date is entered). I also have several columns that have dates and each column
with date would need to be a different colour. (full application column: once date entered into
this column, the row would turn purple) (audit column: once date entered into this column, row
would turn yellow), etc. etc.

Caroline
August 20, 2020 at 10:19 am

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Hi, When I try to do this on my spreadsheet it highlights some of the wrong rows. Can anyone
help me figure out what I am doing wrong?

Ana
April 12, 2021 at 5:07 pm

This is happening to me, too

Girish SV
August 21, 2020 at 4:26 am

I have two rows/sets of data, b12:f12 and n3:r3. I want to compare cell to cell, like b12 with n3,
c12 with o3, d12 with p3 and so on and turn cells red if b12 is greater than n3, c12 > o3 and
so on… I tried
Apply to range >> b12:f12
format rules >> format cells >> if greater than >> “=n3:r3” and colour as red

But this doesnt work. However if i compare f12 to n3 (without a range) it works. Please help..
many thanks!! Girish

Kimberly
August 25, 2020 at 12:41 pm

Hello,
Thank you for sharing this. It was very helpful. What is the formula to get a row to respond to a
date? For example, I am leaving a time stamp in every row and I want the row to turn orange
when the stamps date is 15+ days older than today’s date.

Abhishek A Waghmare
September 1, 2020 at 8:15 am

Hello,

i have some columns with persons names For Ex, “Abhishek”, and i have a list of persons. if
the list doesnt match with entered name then it should be highlight.

For Ex. if i put “Abhi” or “Abhishe” then it should be highlight.

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Megan
September 17, 2020 at 9:29 pm

This is fantastic, thank you so much! I’m a spreadsheet nerd and love learning to do new
things 🙂

Jack McDonald
October 8, 2020 at 3:28 pm

This thread is awesome with so many ideas. I am attempting something but I am struggling
getting the formula to work correctly.

This is for a parts list.

My goal is to display(single cell) the total cost of the products that are marked as urgent.

In a column with part description, I put a “!” if its urgent, in each row there is a price cell and
quantity cell.

If the description cell has a “!”, I want it to multiply Price*quantity and sum all of these values
together.

Cokorda
October 12, 2020 at 8:11 am

Ben, thank you for this. I really like how you explain stuff and I absorbed your lesson very
easily.

Many thanks and looking forward for other lesson from you.

Best,

Ben 
October 12, 2020 at 12:50 pm

Great to hear! Thank you.

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Cheers,
Ben

Carl
October 29, 2020 at 11:08 am

Hello Ben,
I am trying to work on a custom conditional formatting in the row but not able to figure out.
Conditions are.
If the A1 cell has “Yes” than highlight the max number in H1 to K1 and if A1 has “No” than
highlight min number in H1 to K1.
Also
I want this in each row. Do I need to do this conditional formatting for each row or it can be
copy pasted?

Cédric
November 4, 2020 at 7:11 am

Hello!
Great article!
However, I am stuck with the following problem:
I want to highlight an entire row if the row number corresponds to a particular number.
Concretely, I’ve been trying =ROW(A1)=COUNTA(Setup!A2:A)+2.
However, it returns an error…
Any idea ?
Thank you,
Cédric

Kat
November 9, 2020 at 7:15 pm

Is there a way to apply the same rules to other tabs within the same document? I created a
bunch of rules on one tab and would love it if theres a way to replicate them without having to
do it all over again

Lynne Herr
November 11, 2020 at 5:01 pm

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I can make this work for one row, but I need it to apply to every row of the sheet. What is the
syntax for that?

Column A will be one of four values: Red, Green, Yellow or Orange (yes, this is Covid risk dial
data).
Based on the choice entered in column A, I need the whole row to turn that color.

I have set up for custom formulas that all work correctly based on the value in A1. But I need
to apply all 4 of those rules to all of column A and I don’t now how to do that. I am using 4
color versions of this function right now: =$A1=”Green”. How to do I apply it to the value in col-
umn a for each row?

Thank you!

C
December 2, 2020 at 10:09 am

Knowing how to reference a certain column across an entire selection has saved me an un-
godly amount of hours working on this. Thank you so much.

purni
December 31, 2020 at 12:03 am

I have one question.

I want to apply conditional formatting to entire column using java poi. How to specify cell range
for that column.

Thanks is adv,

Lance Taylor
January 11, 2021 at 5:07 pm

I’m stumped. I’m trying to conditional format a COLUMN to with two other COLUMNS. The
column (R2:R17) that needs the formatting has two other columns to base off of it. I want it to
be red if less than column G2:G17, yellow if between G and H, and green if greater than
H2:H17.

Thanks!
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Bob
January 26, 2021 at 2:23 pm

For three different formats, you’ll need three separate rules.

Apply all three rules to your R range since it needs the formatting.
Red: =R2G2, R2<H2) <–assuming GH2

Conditional formatting works somewhat like an ArrayFormula in that you give it rules to
check the first row of data and it does the same check over every row in the range.

Karin Martinsen
January 19, 2021 at 3:49 pm

I am trying to highlight a whole row in a spreadsheet if the employee does not have an internal
email address – if there is no email or if only email is from outside the organization. I have use
count formulas being able to use *@organization* but I cannot figure how to use it for format-
ting rows.

Bob
January 26, 2021 at 2:32 pm

=NOT(REGEXMATCH($B2,”@organization”))

mauro forte
February 2, 2021 at 5:07 am

Hi BIG Ben, thank you for severals usefull tips!! can i format an intere row if in a cell there is a
text but not only? e.g. searching “completata” if in a cell there is “la lavorazione è stata
completata”

Alicia Didino
February 2, 2021 at 7:22 pm

Is it possible to copy a conditional formatting formula for the entire column? I want E2 to high-
light red if it’s value is <F2, but I'd like it to work for the entire column.

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Ben 
February 2, 2021 at 8:22 pm

Yes, use this tutorial as your guide, but put the crucial “$” in front of the number rather than
the letter in the custom formula.

E.g. =A$1<50

Limesh Parekh
July 15, 2021 at 6:37 am

Thanks a lot Ben,

it worked for me.

Nick
February 3, 2021 at 8:47 am

Great article, but none of the suggestions in the comments for highlighting a row based on a
cell’s contents being populated or not work for me.

I.e. if cell is NOT EMPTY, apply formatting to the row.

Any ideas?

Sydney Brown
February 11, 2021 at 8:51 pm

How can I have a column that’s pulling a VLookup and automatically updates based on the
data in a feeding tab *change/add color* so I can see that a change has taken place?

I’m working with DATES (like a schedule).

Thanks!

Jen

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February 15, 2021 at 9:46 am

Thanks, this article has been really helpful!

I’ve got a table with multiple conditional formats depending on the status of an Account –
Yellow when invoiced (=$E2=TRUE), Green when paid (=$G3=TRUE), Red if over 90 days
owing (=$B2>90). But I’ve only managed to apply this to this first line of data… How do I copy
the formatting to the rest of the rows? I’ve tried Paste Special but the absolute references
cause a problem.
Thanks for any ideas!

Danae
February 18, 2021 at 10:23 am

Hey ben,
Is there a way for the word in a cell to be strikethrough if a checkbox is checked? But here is
the situation. The cell has a drop-down list, and every choice has a different color. How can I
add a strikethrough to a word without messing with the color of the box no matter what the
choice are?

Manoj chauhan
February 24, 2021 at 8:29 pm

it worked ….

Aaron
March 2, 2021 at 12:35 pm

Thank you so much for this article (and all the responses).

I am not seeing my use case and am having a difficult time creating the conditional formatting
to accomplish my goal.

I want to highlight an entire row if a set of cells in that row are blank.

My table follows:
|#|M|T|W|T|F
Adam |1|x| | | |x
Beth |2| |x|x| |

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Charlie |3| | | | |
Dan |4| | |x| |

I do not want to check columns A or B. Just C2:G5. And I am looking to hightlight the whole
row if the cells between $c2:$g5 are blank.

Help! Please!

Shafqat
March 22, 2021 at 7:24 pm

Hi everybody , i need help to construct a formula , i am facing following situation.

I want to highlight a cell value when the date in the cell becomes current and i want it to stay
that for another 15th days from the date the value became current.

Example would be making the 01/01/2021 become red on 01/01/2021 and stay that way until
01/15/2021.

Thank you in Advance.

Brian R
March 31, 2021 at 11:56 am

Hello, I’m looking to conditionally format an entire row based on the comparison between 2
cells.

E.g. if C3 (part of the row) does not equal A1 (the cell to compare against with a static value),
colour the row red.

I selected my range, and used a custom formula, and typed this: =$C3A1
But, all rows are coloured red instead of just the rows where C3 is different from A1.

Any ideas?

Mani
April 8, 2021 at 6:55 am

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Hi, I am working on Excel Conditional formula,

I am having issue to copy the formula to multiple rows.
for Ex: In D2 cell , I have drop down list which contains Morning, Evening , Night and i have
already made conditional formula where if Cell D2 contains text Morning than Cell C2 will turn
Green, D2 contains text Evening than cell C2 will turn Red and D2 contains text Night than
Cell C2 will turn Blue. i want to cell C3 should change same if i change text in D3 (D3 also
contains same text as D2). I cannot able to copy past this formula to multiple rows. I hope my
question is reaches you . Hoping to get positive reply ASAP.

Robin
May 1, 2021 at 1:10 am

Hi Everyone! This is some really great info! Thanks so much! I have a question; Is it possible
to format a row to be “if this box is checked, move the entire row to another sheet in the file or
to another row location on the same sheet? Hoping so!

Hana
June 10, 2021 at 6:16 pm

Hi there, I have a very complicated Google sheet exported from google form. I want it to make
it simple, so I used Query in another sheet list to make it simple. But I still want it to make
Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row. It is even possible? thanks

Clément
June 29, 2021 at 11:09 am

Hi Ben
Thanks for this useful post
If you need a chessboard, apply a conditional formatting to an 8×8 cells range with this for-
mula : =MOD(ROW()+COLUMN(),2)=1
🙂

Ben 
June 29, 2021 at 4:23 pm

Nice! ♔ ♕ ♗ ♘ ♙ Thanks for sharing 🙂

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Limesh Parekh
July 15, 2021 at 6:19 am

Hi Ben,

I find your videos and articles to be fantastic.

The ability to format the entire row is superb.

I have one question regarding this conditional formatting.

I am using the pivot table in google sheet. Is there any way I can change the colour of Total
Columns (or “Grand Total” column)

Thanks in advance.

Andrew Bell
July 21, 2021 at 11:47 am

Not sure if this has been answered but how can I highlight a large sheet that has multiple
empty rows?

I have tried something like =empty($A:$JA) without success. Help would be greatly
appreciated.

Mark
July 29, 2021 at 2:25 pm

Exactly what I needed and right to the point. This is prime internet content 🙂

Mike M.
August 18, 2021 at 2:09 pm

Hi,

I just tried to apply the conditional formatting =$L3=”Returned”, but instead of going to the row
where Returned is selected from the drop down, it highlights the row above. This happens re-

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peatedly as well, I don’t know what I’m missing. Any help is much apprecaited!

Ben 
August 20, 2021 at 11:23 am

Hey Mike, you need to ensure your conditional formatting rule and the range it’s applied to
begin on the same row, otherwise it’ll highlight a different row than you expect. I.e. if you
want to apply formatting to range A2:D10 then your rule would be =$A2=”something” where
the row starts on 2 with range and formula.

Cheers,
Ben

Mike M.
August 18, 2021 at 2:29 pm

So, I played around a bit more and found if you start at L2 for your formula, you need to start
your applied range at the same row (I.E. A2) in order to have your color be in the same row as
the selected word(s).

Alex
September 3, 2021 at 12:40 am

He, is there a way to highlight a cell for example A1 if there is text “Complete” in one of the
cells range G4:W4?

i’ve tried =$G4=”complete” and A1 is only highlighted if there is data in G4 but nothing hap-
pens if “complete” in k4 or other cells on the same row.

Thank you

Andrew
September 20, 2021 at 2:48 pm

How can I use conditional formatting to highlight a range of cells (B3:G5) based off a list from
column J? I am ultimately wanting to use column J as the live results so that I can cross-off
the values from the table (B3:G5).

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Taya
September 26, 2021 at 5:34 pm

I’ve created drop down queue list with separate formats for each selection “Spoke”,
“Speaking”, and “Up Next”. I want to make sure that only one person can be marked as
“Speaking” at a time, so whenever I change one box to “Speaking”, the previous one marked
as “Speaking” will automatically change to “Spoke”. This would be simple if each person on
the list is speaking in order, but we sometimes have to move on and circle back to people.
What formula can I use?

Kit
September 27, 2021 at 11:59 am

Hello, I need some help. What conditional format would I use to color a whole row when a
phrase/title in column A starts with the words GO, or an @ sign, followed by more words? I
tried using “text start with” but of course, it wouldn’t color the whole row and I’m stuck.

Mrs. Bell
October 3, 2021 at 6:44 pm

Hi Ben, Is there a way to use conditional formatting to automatically insert a row above. For
example, when someone edits A2, a new row is automatically inserted above it? I’ve been
reading about macros and triggers and I just can’t understand….not tech savvy at all. But, it’s
frustrating to have to manually right click and insert row above every time someone needs to
edit. My sheet needs to be in chronological order. I also tried sorting but you have to highlight
the entire sheet or all cells. There has to be an easier way???

Lindsey
October 7, 2021 at 2:28 pm

Hi there,

Is there a way to highlight a cell that is empty if another cell in the same row is not empty?

Thanks!

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miukat
November 11, 2021 at 5:59 am

OMG! This is the best tutorial! I suck at spreadsheets and even I was able to conditionally for-
mat a colored row! You’re awesome! Thank you 🙂

Paul Staples
November 22, 2021 at 6:03 pm

Ben. Such an excellent tutorial. I’m signing up for your course.

Here is a spreadsheet that I’m creating.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a3fjLVJKTaM_nB1oeQ3N6FpOP0WLyAZgXqUe8Pj
KCQk/edit?usp=sharing

I have found a script that will add the date and time when information is populated into the
spreadsheet, and I am referencing the company name column.

/**
* Creates a Date Stamp if a column is edited.
*/

//CORE VARIABLES
// The column you want to check if something is entered.
var COLUMNTOCHECK = 3;
// Where you want the date time stamp offset from the input location. [row, column]
var DATETIMELOCATION = [0, -2];
// Sheet you are working on
var SHEETNAME = ‘Master Prospect List’

function onEdit(e) {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var sheet = ss.getActiveSheet();
//checks that we’re on the correct sheet.
if( sheet.getSheetName() == SHEETNAME ) {
var selectedCell = ss.getActiveCell();
//checks the column to ensure it is on the one we want to cause the date to appear.
if( selectedCell.getColumn() == COLUMNTOCHECK) {
var dateTimeCell = selectedCell.offset(DATETIMELOCATION[0],DATETIMELOCATION[1]);
dateTimeCell.setValue(new Date());
}
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}
}

I want that date and time to be removed if the data is removed from the referenced cell and re-
turn to a blank state.

Also, the four names listed in the assigned to column, I want to copy them down in that same
order as more information is added to the spreadsheet, referencing again the company name
column, so that each person is assigned the next company in succession, and once those
companies are assigned to the respective person, that row with their name will change to a
specified color, so that each persons row with their name will be highlighted in that color.
Also, additional names may be added in the future, so how would I conditionally write that so
that as more names are added, i.t copies down with the additional names and they each get a
new color.

Cat French
December 2, 2021 at 8:12 pm

This is not working for me however I am wondering if it is because the Column that I am want-
ing to use as my conditional cell contains a drop down box.
=$R4=LOA

Cameron
December 20, 2021 at 5:10 pm

Is it Possible to make certain columns cells within a row different colors based on another col-
umn Values Starting with a specific Letter?

Example: D1 and E1 are Green, if A1 starts with a “U”

If that makes any sense.

Dan G.
December 21, 2021 at 1:46 pm

Hello,

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This page is super helpful! How do you highlight a whole row if the cell in the first column ends
in a particular number (text ends with)?

Thanks in advance!

David Knapp
January 9, 2022 at 2:24 am

Ben, this, like just about all your posts, is super helpful and very clear.

What I can’t figure out is how to apply a color scale to a group of cells based on an aggregate
of their values (preferably without adding a helper cell).

For example, if SUM(B3:F3) ≥ 4 those cells should be medium blue, indicating success; if it’s
< 2, they should all be red. I can get this done using separate rules for each color, but that
doesn't provide the fine differences I'd like to see. Is it even possible to apply a color scale
based on values outside the target cell?

Georgia Triffitt-Harwood
February 4, 2022 at 7:55 am

Is there a way to highlight a group of cells in a row red only if they are all empty?

I have a table with a list of team members from A14 to A22 and the months of the year across
row 13, I want the cells to all be red from January – June and then July – December unless a
date is put anywhere within those sections as they need to have had at least one team meet-
ing in a 6 month period. Thanks in advance!

Tania Rodriguez
February 18, 2022 at 10:31 am

How can this be applied to a column intead?

Ben 
February 18, 2022 at 4:46 pm

Hi Tania,

https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/conditional-formatting-entire-row/ 85/87
5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

You can apply this to columns by locking the row reference part in your custom function.

E.g. if you want to test values from row 1 = A$1 = "some value"

Then this rule is applied to the whole of any columns where the value in row 1 of those col-
umns equals “some value”.

Cheers,
Ben

Sonya
March 1, 2022 at 8:35 pm

How would I formulate column A, which is a date, to turn red if the date is past 14days or past
30days and column H is unchecked? I also want the whole line to turn green when column H
is checked regardless of the date. How would I accomplish this?

Colin Wymark
March 7, 2022 at 7:42 pm

HI,
I would like to be able to have the ability to place a work in a cell in one column turn the row’s
text red then when a certain word is placed in a cell in another column it highlights the row. Is
this possible
Ive tried to do it but the highlighting overrides the text colour and reverts back to black

José SISA
March 30, 2022 at 4:27 am

Hi, first of all i apologize for my bad english.

my problem is about 4 cells on the same column :
JG15 , JG16 , JG17 , JG18 .

If one of any thos 4 cells is not blank, i would like to paint to green all thos 4 cells.

I wrote this formula on the conditional formula :

=OR(JG15″”;JG16″”;JG17″”;JG18″”)

https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/conditional-formatting-entire-row/ 86/87
5/19/22, 12:14 PM How To Apply Conditional Formatting Across An Entire Row

and this says TRUE if just one contains something. ans FALSE if all the cells are empty….

but on the conditional format, that doesn’t work….what i’m doing wrong ?

thanks a lot for your help.

José From France.

Ben 
March 30, 2022 at 11:28 am

Hi José,

Try this formula as your custom formula rule:

=OR($JG$15<>"";$JG$16<>"";$JG$17<>"";$JG$18<>"")

(It looks like the not equal signs were removed by WordPress when you posted your original
comment.)

You need to include the $ signs to make the references absolute for the conditional format-
ting to work.

Hope this helps!

Ben

Alexus
May 16, 2022 at 3:57 pm

How would I use this with a drop down menu in column A? I want the entire row to be a differ-
ent color depending on the options selected, without effecting the other rows?

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