Help to avoid hundreds of conditional formatting

Lisa Mullaney

Hi all,

I have a sheet with columns that list a particular service. My rows are site names and we're tracking the level of adoption for each service with the below list:

FI (H)

FI (NR-H)

FI (NI)

C-FI

P

NI

V

N/A

I want to have each one colour coded like you would with conditional formatting but I have 28 columns and so if I used conditional formatting I would need to create about 224 rules. Does anyone have any other methods to do this. I have more sites than services so it won't make sense to swap columns and rows either.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Lisa

Kelly Moore

Hello @Lisa Mullaney

Unless you are trying to make each cell a different color, you will only need 8 conditional formulas. You can choose entire row if you want the entire row colored - or, any one of the rules can individually select multiple columns at a time. Remember with color - less is more. Sheet filters are also a way to focus in on what you wish to see at one time.

You may find this article helpful

https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/level-1-get-started/conditional-formatting

Kelly

Lisa Mullaney

I do want a different colour for each of the categories of implementation so you can easily visualize where there are differences. Applying to a whole row won't allow for changes in each service as it will only apply the colour selected for the first column instance. I find when you use one rule and select multiple columns the formatting doesn't follow through correctly for any column after the first.