Using Excel 2007 Conditional Formatting
Gayle Fink (gfink@bowiestate.edu)
This corner of the newsletter is reserved for readers
to share practical tips, techniques and shortcuts that can make a difference in
our work. Send your tips to Gayle Fink (gfink@bowiestate.edu).
While I was filling out the U.S. News & World Report main survey recently, I
was reminded of how quickly I could answer the “top 5 degrees” question using the
conditional formatting feature in Excel. Conditional formatting saves time by helping
us tell the “data story” without creating different formulas. Below is a simple
way of using conditional formatting to get the top 5 Bachelor’s degrees from the
CDS.
- Start Excel 2007 and open your institution’s CDS (assuming that it is in Excel).
- Highlight the cells with the Bachelor’s degree percentages.
- On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting
and then click Top/Bottom Rules and then Top 10 Items.
- A dialogue box appears with the top 10 defaulted. Adjust this to the top five and
change the conditional formatting color if you like. Here are your top five without
doing a lot of work.
