In this blog post, we create a Conditional Formatting rule to automatically highlight rows in an Excel list at each value change.

I’ve got multiple guests from the same company attending an event and I want each company section to stand out. The default banded rows of Excel Tables does not help with reading my attendee tracker.

For this example, I want to highlight groups of rows – each company in my list.

Let’s create a Conditional Formatting rule to automatically highlight each company section. The rule will format the entire row based on the company name changing from the previous row.

This is much easier to read compared to the classic banded row formatting used by Excel tables.

So, how can we do this?

When using formulas in tabular data in Excel, you will need to copy a formula down the entire column, so that each row has that same formula.

There are a few techniques to copying formulas in Excel, and this article will detail what you should be aware of, and why you would apply each specific technique.

Use the following links to jump to a specific section in the article.

• How to Copy Formulas in Excel
  • Copy down without formatting
  • Copy a formula fast to all cells in a column
  • Use the Fill Down button or keyboard shortcut
  • Excel uses Relative Cell References
  • Copying formulas to non-adjacent cells
  • The magic of Ctrl + Enter
• How to fix a cell when copying a formula down
  • Absolute reference in Excel
  • Mixed references in Excel
  • Using a named range
• Entire column formulas in Tables
• Using an array formula

Download the sample file to practise.

The rich data types make it easy to get a live currency exchange rate in Excel. You can then convert currencies with an Excel formula that updates when the exchange rate changes.