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Add emphasis to your reports - 2010 update

Introduction

A while ago we looked at using conditional formatting to provide a dynamic highlight for the important figures in a report. This became a lot easier when Excel 2007 dramatically increased both the ease of use, and capability, of conditional formatting. Instead of having to use a condition based on a formula and inserting a special symbol in each cell, Excel 2007 included conditional format 'icons' and the ability to suppress the display of cell contents apart from the icon. This allowed the emphasis column to include references to the figures used to trigger the emphasis. The conditional format is then based directly on the figures with the option to show the icon only selected.

However, if you just wanted to show a single red icon to emphasise rows over the trigger value, then you had to suppress the other icons. In the previous article we did this by including an additional conditional format that set the cell format to white font on a white background for all items less than the trigger, placing this above the main conditional format in the Manage rules list, and setting it to Stop If True. This ensured that the 'icon' format only comes into play for the red icon value rows.

Excel 2010 enhancements