Question

I have a list in Excel and I need to format rows based on the value in the cell 2 of that row. This is how data looks like

No. | Name | Other data | Other data 2 | Date | Date 2 |

For example, if Name=John Tery => color row as Red, if Name=Mary Jane => color row as Pink, etc.

I tried using conditional formatting, but I did not know how to make this work. I have very little experience with such tasks in Excel.

Can anyone help?

PS. all name are two-word names

Answer 1

if there are only a few names to handle, each conditional-format formula would look like this

=$B2="John Tery"

• you need to have selected the affected rows from the top row down (so current active cell is in the 2nd row, not in the last row)
• absolute reference to column $B means that for all cells in different columns, column B will be tested
• relative reference to row 2 means that for cell in different rows, its own row will be tested (e.g. for cell A42, the formula will test value of $B42)
• equality operator = will return either TRUE or FALSE (or an error if any of the arguments are errors) and it has the same use as inside IF conditions…