OHSU's Software Forum

Susan Conrad · Joined: 02 Nov 2007 Posts: 31

There are some great new additions to Excel's condional formatting to make your data easier to interpret. In previous versions of Excel, you could have a maximum of three conditional formats. There’s no such limit in Office Excel 2007; you may have as many conditional formats as you like!

There are three new types of colorful conditional formats:
1. Data bars which represent your values by the length of band of color;
2. Color scales which use a color set - yellows to reds for example - to represent your values.
3. Icon sets - a variety of icons - traffic lights, flags, etc. - to represent your values. For example, the number 0 represents red flag; 1-50 represents yellow flag; and 51-100 represents green flag.

Warning: These new conditional format types are not backwards compatible. Even with the Comp. Pack, you won't see any flags for example; just the value.

howet · Joined: 12 Nov 2007 Posts: 6

This came up in my last Excel 2003 class where a student has a list where one column can contain the names of about 20 different countries. With Excel 2003 only three of these country names can be color coded (e.g. "if cell contents = Austria, set color to Blue"), but under Excel 2007, every country in the world (and then some) can have its own assigned color. The limit becomes how many colors can the human eye distinguish.

--Tom Howe