Apparent bug in Numbers Highlighting rules

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Apparent bug in Numbers Highlighting rules

I want to highlight the largest number in a column of numbers. First, I select a result cell to find what the largest number is, then use the formula MAX and the range of the cells in the column. The largest number is now displayed in the result cell. Then I select the cells in the column again, click cell, click show Highlighting Rules, select equal to, and select there result cell with the Max number and a green fill if satisfied, then select Done.

The column highlights a number of cells in green, none of which satisfy the criteria, and the max number is not even selected. Is this indeed a bug?

Posted on Sep 26, 2021 8:18 AM

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Answer 1

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SGIII

Level 8

35,396 points

Sep 26, 2021 9:08 AM in response to nemosdogs

nemosdogs wrote:

How'd you find this?

By a little quick experimenting. Note that if you take advantage of built-in Numbers features such Header and Footer Rows, then generally you can just refer to the whole column rather than a range within the column. For example, the formula in A10 in my example is simply =MAX(A). I can do that because row 10 is defined as a Footer Row. A bonus is that Numbers will automatically insert the $ when I click A10 as I'm constructing the Conditional Highlighting rule.

SG

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Answer 2

nemosdogs Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 26, 2021 9:00 AM in response to SGIII

Eureka! Yes, fixing the result cell in the comparison by adding the $ solves the issue. I was just selecting that cell when satisfying the highlighting rule. How'd you find this? I could not see anywhere in the help text a hint that for this to work you need a fixed cell location? Many thanks!

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Answer 3

SGIII

Level 8

35,396 points

Sep 26, 2021 8:39 AM in response to nemosdogs

I'm guessing you didn't click the box-with-arrow icon before selecting the cell with the MAX formula.

Make sure you set the $ anchor correctly.

SG

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Apparent bug in Numbers Highlighting rules

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