Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting paints cells based on what they contain. A rule watches a range, and every cell in that range whose value matches the rule's condition picks up the rule's bold / italic / underline / colors.

The formatting is applied at paint time — it never changes the value in the cell and never overwrites the formatting you applied by hand. Delete the rule and the cells go straight back to how they looked.

Open the Conditional Formatting Panel

Click the Conditional formatting (brush) icon in the toolbar to open the right-side panel.

On a narrow screen the toolbar collapses its extra tools into a More formatting options (⋮) menu — open it and choose Conditional formatting there.

There is no right-click entry for conditional formatting, and the panel is only available on regular sheet tabs. See Where rules live for the tabs it does not cover.

TIP

Select the cells you want to format before opening the panel. Clicking back into the grid closes the panel, so the selection you had when you opened it is the one the panel can use.

Add a Rule

1. Select the range you want to format.
2. Open the panel and click Add.

The new rule starts as Is not empty with a pale-yellow fill, scoped to the cells you had selected (or to A1 if nothing was selected), and its editor opens below the rule list.

From there:

• Apply to range — type a range and click Apply, or click Use selected range to fill it from your current grid selection.
• Format rules — pick the condition and its value (see below).
• Formatting style — pick what the matching cells should look like.

Writing ranges

The range box takes A1 ranges with both ends written out, separated by commas for a rule that covers several blocks:

A1:B10, D1:E10

A single cell has to be written as A1:A1 — a bare A1 is rejected with "Enter valid A1 ranges like A1:D20 or A1:B10, D1:E10."

Use selected range needs a cell selection. If you have a whole row, a whole column, or the entire sheet selected via its header, it answers "Select a cell range first."

Format Rules

The Format rules dropdown offers seven conditions:

Condition	What it matches
Is empty	The cell is blank (or holds only whitespace)
Is not empty	The cell holds anything else
Text contains	The cell's text contains what you typed, ignoring case
Greater than	The cell is a number greater than the number you typed
Is between	The cell is a number inside the two bounds, inclusive
Date before	The cell is a date earlier than the date you typed
Date after	The cell is a date later than the date you typed

Is empty and Is not empty take no value. Is between shows two boxes, Min and Max — the range is inclusive at both ends, and entering them in the wrong order still works. The other four show a single box, prompting Enter text, Enter number, or YYYY-MM-DD depending on the condition.

A few details worth knowing:

• Greater than and Is between compare numbers. Thousands separators in the cell or in the value you type are ignored, and a cell that isn't a number simply never matches.
• Date before / Date after compare whole days. YYYY-MM-DD is the format the box asks for; other date text is accepted if the browser can read it, and a cell that isn't a date never matches.

Formatting Style

A rule can set any combination of:

• Bold, Italic, Underline toggles
• Text color — a palette, plus Reset to go back to the default color
• Background color — a palette, plus None for no fill

That's the whole list. A rule can't change number formats, borders, fonts, or alignment.

WARNING

A rule is only saved once it is complete. A rule with no style at all — every toggle off and both colors cleared — is dropped, and so is a value-taking rule whose value box is still empty. It disappears from the panel the next time you open it.

Rule Order and Overlap

The panel says it at the top: rules are applied from top to bottom. Each rule card is numbered, and the ↑ / ↓ buttons on a card move it in that order.

When two rules match the same cell, their styles are merged, and the rule lower in the list wins for the properties it actually sets. A rule that only sets a background color leaves an earlier rule's bold and text color in place; a rule that also sets a background color replaces the earlier one's.

Conditional formatting sits on top of every other style layer — sheet, column, row, range, and the cell's own formatting. Where a rule matches, its properties win.

Edit or Delete a Rule

• Click a rule's card to select it; its range, condition, and style appear in the editor below.
• Click the ✕ on a card to delete the rule. The formatting for that range disappears immediately.

Each card also summarizes itself — the condition and value, the ranges it covers, swatches for its colors, and a short style summary such as B · Fill (or No style).

Rules and Structural Edits

Rules follow the grid. Inserting, deleting, or moving rows and columns remaps every rule's ranges to match, so a rule on B2:B100 still covers the same cells after a row is inserted above it.

If a rule's ranges are deleted entirely — you delete every row or column it covered — the rule is removed with them.

Where Rules Live

Rules belong to a single tab and are saved into the document, so collaborators see the same formatting you do. A person opening the document through a read-only share link sees the formatting too; they just don't get the panel.

• Sheet tabs — fully supported.
• Pivot table tabs — supported; they're sheet tabs, and refreshing a pivot rewrites its cells without touching the rules. But a rule stays anchored to the cells you gave it, so a pivot that changes shape can leave a rule covering the wrong part of the output.
• DataSource and Lakehouse tabs — not supported. Those tabs render a read-only result grid with no formatting toolbar, so there's no way to open the panel on them. Shape the data in SQL instead, or copy the results into a sheet tab and format it there.