Excel: Select column starting from cell X in formatting rule

Question

I'm trying to create a rule that formats a row so that it has red background color if the content of another row is "x" . Unfortunately, the header and empty cells above the table will be included if I simply select =$H:$H="x" as my condition for formatting. I want something like: =$H$6:$H$(INFINITY) . Is this possible?

Answer 1

If you want to apply the conditional formatting starting from Row6, while selecting the range for applying the conditional formatting, make sure C6 should be the first cell in the selection ie it should be the active cell in the selection and then make a new rule for conditional formatting using the formula given below.

=$H6="x"

Also if you are not sure how far you need to apply this conditional formatting down the rows, would be better if you format your data as an Excel Table, so when the data grows withing the table down the rows, the conditional formatting will also be carried to the new rows added in the table.

Having a conditional formatting for a unused range on the sheet increases the file size as all the rows contain the conditional formatting and the formula in the background.

Answer 2

You can just use =$H$6:$H$1048576 or =$H$6:$H$65536 while applying conditional formatting. A simplest way of doing this.

Answer 3

Your formula does lag a lot as you are searching through so many rows down. THe best thing you can do is try to limit the amount of rows to search. Ie if you know your dataset only contains max 5000 rows, set the limit to that H6:H5000. This will help.

If the rows change a lot, the best way would be to make it dynamic. Ie make a name range for the range you want to validate and in the name manager, change the range to include offset. This will help you set the range to be what you have data in. Note: You need to know how many rows (ie use counta) which you will need to figure out if there are blanks at any point. Otherwise you do the counta on a column where you have no blanks.

Hope this makes sense and easy for you.