You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: hanyvo
hanyvo Author
User level: Level 1
45 points

Not really Alternating row colour in Numbers

Just another "highlighting" question, I couldn't find an answer for in the community. I want an alternating row colour every time when the date is changing:


So the left colomn is the date, and the rows on the right are filled with data from elsewhere. Sometimes only one row is filled, sometimes 10 and sometimes dates are skipped. So it becomes very laborious after 500 or more rows.

I hope someone can be of any help.

Thanks in advance.


Hans

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Nov 13, 2020 8:07 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: Badunit
Badunit
User level: Level 7
28,636 points

Posted on Nov 13, 2020 8:56 AM

Numbers does not make it easy to highlight an entire row. It can be done with a second table underneath your table but I've never really liked that workaround because it is hard to keep them aligned over time.


If you are okay with it highlighting just the date cells and if you are okay with adding two new columns to your table (which you can hide) that will do the necessary work to do the highlighting, here is one solution:



  1. Create two new columns
  2. Formula in B2 =IF(A2=A1,B1,NOT(B1))
  3. B1 can have TRUE or FALSE or nothing in it, depending on how you want the highlighting to begin (yellow or not). Anything else will cause an error.
  4. C2 =IF(B2,A2,"")
  5. Fill down to end of columns with those formulas
  6. Create the conditional formula show above for cell A2
  7. With A2 selected, Copy Style
  8. Paste Style to the rest of the column
  9. Hide columns B and C


This could probably be done with just one new column, not two, but this way is pretty clear to understand.

View in context

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: Badunit
Badunit
User level: Level 7
28,636 points

Nov 13, 2020 8:56 AM in response to hanyvo

Numbers does not make it easy to highlight an entire row. It can be done with a second table underneath your table but I've never really liked that workaround because it is hard to keep them aligned over time.


If you are okay with it highlighting just the date cells and if you are okay with adding two new columns to your table (which you can hide) that will do the necessary work to do the highlighting, here is one solution:



  1. Create two new columns
  2. Formula in B2 =IF(A2=A1,B1,NOT(B1))
  3. B1 can have TRUE or FALSE or nothing in it, depending on how you want the highlighting to begin (yellow or not). Anything else will cause an error.
  4. C2 =IF(B2,A2,"")
  5. Fill down to end of columns with those formulas
  6. Create the conditional formula show above for cell A2
  7. With A2 selected, Copy Style
  8. Paste Style to the rest of the column
  9. Hide columns B and C


This could probably be done with just one new column, not two, but this way is pretty clear to understand.

Reply
User profile for user: Marc-Andr St-Pierre
Marc-Andr St-Pierre
User level: Level 1
18 points

Nov 26, 2020 3:44 PM in response to hanyvo

Hi

Almost 3 years ago, SGIII gave me the following answer (link) to this question. You can use a script as you will see at the end of our discussion. No need to know how scripts work. It's just a matter of copying the script and pasting it into the script editor. It might help you,


MA

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8304672?answerId=33110614022#33110614022

Reply

Not really Alternating row colour in Numbers

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.
Learn more Sign up