Formatting versus Conditional Formatting

In Excel, you can apply a wide variety of formatting to cells by way of the Format Cells dialog box. As you’ll see, Conditional Formatting utilizes a subset of the Format Cells dialog box, which means you can apply almost all of the same formatting with Conditional Formatting. Let’s compare the two:

1. Choose Home | Format | Format Cells, or press Ctrl + 1 ( + 1 in Excel for macOS).
2. As shown in Figure 4.1, the Format Cells dialog box has six tabs that allow you to control every aspect of formatting within a worksheet cell:

Figure 4.1 – Border tab of the Format Cells dialog box

3. Optional: click on each tab to review the available formatting.
4. Click Cancel to close the Format Cells dialog box.

Let’s now have a look at the Conditional Formatting version of the Format Cells dialog box:

1. Choose Home | Conditional Formatting | New Rule | Use a Formula to Determine...