Conditional formatting that changes entire row

Question

Level 1

4 points

Conditional formatting that changes entire row

Hi all,

I haven't used Numbers in any depth for some years and have always used Excel at work, but the conditional formatting on Numbers seems severely limited.

I'm trying to change an entire row into a different colour based on whether or not the in a cell in that row date is in the past, but it appears you can only apply conditional formatting to individual rows. Is that the case?

Thanks

Posted on Jun 20, 2021 3:53 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Badunit

Level 7

28,324 points

Jun 20, 2021 5:05 AM in response to Rhys Bethell

There is no built-in method to highlight an entire row (or to highlight a cell based solely on the value in another cell, which is how to do it in Excel) but here is a way to do it that is pretty simple:

Add a new column to your table
Create a formula for that column to indicate whether the row should be highlighted or not. If to be highlighted, the formula result will be "" (null string). If not to be highlighted the formula result will be a character no one is likely to use, like CHAR(10000).
Select all the cells in your table that need highlighted.
Create a highlighting rule of "text ends with". Click on the green oval and choose the top cell from the new column as the reference (the one in the same row as the top cell of all the cells you have selected). Add a $ to it (eg., like in $E2) to preserve the column. All the cells will get a highlighting rule based on the cell in that column in their own row.
Hide the extra column