Duplicate conditional format

ayano swadkins

I am looking for the same rule like excel conditional formatting, highlight cell rules duplicate values.

I have employee number row, if the same employee number is entered, would like to highlight the numbers.

Paul Newcome

You would need a helper column that can be hidden after setting up that will flag duplicates. You would then create your conditional formatting rule based on this helper column being flagged.

ayano swadkins

what is a helper column? Is that mean create another same columns that copy from the main entry then to detect duplicate?

Paul Newcome

It is simply a new column with some type of formula in it to "help" the sheet function the way you want it to. You could use a basic COUNTIFS to count how many times the number appears and then use conditional formatting on rows where the number in the helper column is greater than one.

=COUNTIFS([Number Column]:[Number Column], @cell = [Number Column]@row)