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AR15.COM
7/30/2010 11:57:51 AM EDT
here's the deal, i am using excel 2007 to make a simple spreadsheet
i have two columns of data, and i need to go through row by row and compare the two columns, whichever is less i need to format


11000 | 12000
10000 | 9000
12000 | 12000


i feel like there should be an easy way to do this, but if i select conditional formatting, highlight cells rules, less than. it will only work for the first cells, if i use format painter or try to assign it to the entire data set it only compares it to the first value. plus then i need to do the opposite rule for the cells in the right column.

it's annoying, it's friday, and i feel like i can only do this by assigning an individual pair of rules to each row and i don't know any other way to do that but manually. you'd think if i set the rules and copied them down, it would update the conditional to reference the new cells like it does every other fucking time when i DON'T want it to happen.

on top of it i have a few hundred rows of data so it would take way too long
7/30/2010 12:00:31 PM EDT
[#1]
Sort a-z function with highlighting the entire row?

 
7/30/2010 12:04:10 PM EDT
[#2]
nevermind, as soon as i posted this i figured it out

highlight column 1
conditional formatting
formula
=$A2<$B2
choose formatting

highlight column 2
conditional formatting
formula
=$B2<$A2
choose formatting

i don't know what i was doing wrong earlier but this works fine
7/30/2010 12:08:00 PM EDT
[#3]
I think you need to define the entire range and then format it.  Like you did to fix it.
7/30/2010 12:28:02 PM EDT
[#4]
Plate 'o shrimp.

You need to do it in two steps.

First select the entire column A.

Go to Conditional Formatting> New Rule>Use Formula

Make your formula "=a1<b1" and set whatever formatting choices you want.  This will set column A.

Use the same procedure for column B, except the formula is "=b1<a1"

This sort of thing was a bit easier in earlier versions of excel.