applying the same formatting to all columns/rows?

rebeccan

Hi,

I am using a grid view as a calendar (think each column represents a day, the first few columns are names/employee numbers/etc). I have one formatting rule so far: if the value in the cell is "xyz" then color that cell light green.

How can I easily apply that formatting to a) multiple strings (either "xyz" OR "abc") and b) across ALL columns?

Right now the formatting rule says "If 2 Dec is 'SEA' then apply this format to the 2 Dec column."

I seem to be able to only select one column for the <if> condition.

It's a big pain to have to apply the same formatting rule to every column, so I must be doing something wrong.

Thanks!

Dale Murphy

@rebeccan So ... my first question is why are you doing what you described?

SmartSheet is excellent at date management, even having a column type of date so you can have every row be a different date automatically. The tool also has a calendar view which can be quite useful if you want to show when people are off or at certain locations (assuming you have built rows with these tasks with dates, maybe Start and End dates in two columns.)

I recommend rethinking your layout before building a conditional format for every column.

dm

rebeccan

The short answer is that I am a new user, we pretty much just use the grid view, so I'm not familiar with the calendar view. Furthermore, the grid view with the days is how a higher business unit does the schedule, so I can't really change that, though I am trying to improve upon it with the cell formatting. The date format is not really the solution for this format, because the cell value is not a date, it's actually a location, or other adjective for duty (e.g. SEA or VAC). I've attached another view to show our schedule; each row is an employee (light blue (weekends) and red background colors are manually done.) This format is used to get a quick *view* of how many people are in each office (there are three different offices), as well as count how many days per month an employee will work in the current month.

So it sounds like there is no function for global (sheet-wide) formatting?

sfloyd

I would like to know how to do this too! Rebeccan - did you ever figure it out? This would really help me keep track of who is where at any given week.