Mike Schaeffer's Blog

David Gainer has Summarized a a number of new conditional formatting rules in Excel 12, over on the Excel 12 blog. These rules were designed to "make a greater number of scenarios possible without needing to write formulas." In other words, all these scenarios have simple solutions directly visible in the Excel 12 UI.

Well, if you can't wait for Excel 12, Excel is pretty darned powerful as it is, and as Mr. Gainer states: most of these scenarios have formula-based approaches that work right now. Here are some of the approaches for current versions of Excel:

• With data bars, color scales, or icons based on the numeric value in the cell, percentages, percentiles, or a formula. See the posts on data bars, color scales, and icon sets for more information on each of these. - This approach to 'databars' generalizes to formula-based scaling, although it's not as pretty, not a color scale, and not an icon set.
• Containing, not containing, beginning with, or ending with specific text. For example, highlighting parts containing certain characters in a parts catalog. - Use a formula: a lot of these conditions can be tested using FIND: =FIND(string, A1)=1, checks for parts that begin with string, for example.
• Containing dates that match dynamic conditions like yesterday, today, tomorrow, in the last 7 days, last week, this week, next week, last month, this month, next month. For example, highlight all items dated yesterday. The great part about these conditions is that Excel handles calculating the date based on the system clock, so the user doesn.t need to worry about updating the condition. - Use a formula: the system date is available via NOW(), and Excel offers plenty of date arithmetic functions to check for specific conditions.
• That are blank or that are non-blank. - Use a formula: =ISBLANK(A1) or =NOT(ISBLANK(A1))
• That have errors or that do not have errors. - Use a formula: =ISERROR(A1) or =NOT(ISERROR(A1))
• That are in the top n of a selected range (where n is whatever number you want) OR that are in the top n percent of a selected range (again, where n is adjustable). For example, highlighting the top 10 investment returns in a table of 1,000 investments. - Use a formula: =RANK(A1, range) > n.
• Cells that have the bottom n values OR cells that are the bottom n percent of a selected range. - Use a formula: `=RANK(A1, range)n`.
• Cells that are above average, below average, equal to or above average, equal to or below average, 1 standard deviation above, 1 standard deviation below, 2 standard deviations above, 2 standard deviations below, 3 standard deviations above, 3 standard deviations below a selected range. - This type of thing can be solved using a particular form of formula: =A1<(AVERAGE(ange)-n*STDEV(range)) or =A1>(AVERAGE(ange)+n*STDEV(range)). For large ranges, it probably makes sense to move the computation of AVERAGE and STDEV into a cell, and have the conditional format reference (with an absolute reference) that cell.
• Cells that are duplicate values or, conversely, cells that are unique values. - Use a formula: =COUNTIF(range, A1)=1 or =COUNTIF(range, A1)>1. Ensure that the range you use in the formula has an absolute address. If your range is sorted on the 'key' field, you can use this style of formula: =A1<>A2. This can be much, much faster, particularly for large tables. (For the Comp. Sci. types it's O(N), rather than O(N² ), once you have sorted data.)
• Based on comparisons between two columns in tables. For example, highlight values where values in the .Actual Sales. column are less than in the .Sales Target. column. - Use a conditional format formula: =A1<B1. Apply it to the entire column you want shaded, and Excel will evaluate the seperately for each cell. The cell references in the format formula are relative to the current cell in the selected range. The current cell is the cell in the range that is not highlighted (but is surrounded by a selection border), and can be moved around the four corners of the range with Control+. (period).
• When working with tables, we have also made it easy to format the entire row based on the results of a condition. - Relative formulas can be made to do this: select an entire range, and define a conditional formula using absolute column addresses (ie: =$a1). Excel evaluates the format formula for each cell in the range, and since the column addresses are absolute, each cell in a row will pull from the came columns. Therefore, each cell in a row will share the same conditional format, which is what we want.

Based on this, you don't have to wait for Excel 12 to get a lot of these features, you just have to wait for Excel 12 if you want Excel to do it for you automatically. My suggestion would be to learn how to use conditional formatting formulas, but I tend to be "here's how to fish" kind of guy more than a "here's a fish" kind of guy.

This is a simple little two-bit Excel trick that I find myself using all the time, particularly when formatting worksheets.

In Excel, Control+Y is the 'other half' of the Undo/Redo pair. If you undo an action and want to redo what you just undid, Control+Y undoes the undo, so to speak. However, if you haven't undone anything, and there's nothing on the redo queue, Control+Y repeats the last single action you took.

Repeatable actions can actually be quite complex. For example, opening the Format Cell dialog box and applying a format counts as one repeatable action, regardless of how many format attributes you change. Once you make that format change to one cell and before you do anything else Control+Y has become a key that applies that specific format change to as many other cells as you like.

In a sense, Control+Y is a command that's eternally bound to a simple macro that Excel keeps updating with your last action. If you plan your work to group actions together, this 'automatic' macro can save a lots of time.

I had this written out and then discovered a better way. SUBTOTAL is "sensitive to AutoFilter settings", right? Assuming A1 isn't empty, this formula =subtotal(a1, 2)=1 returns TRUE if row 1 is visible and FALSE otherwise. No VBA necessary.

Not too long ago, I made a post that describes how to replicate some of the behavior of Excel Autofilters using a purely formula based approach. One of the arguments I put forward in support of that technique is that it makes it possible to use filtered result sets to drive other calculations. However, the approach also has two disadvantages: it's slow to compute and can be a little tricky to setup and understand. As a sort of intermediate ground between using the AutoFilter and re-implementing it, this post describes how an Excel formula can determine if a row is a member of an AutoFilter result set. The magic bit is this little user defined function:

Function IsVisible(rng As Range) As Boolean
    IsVisible = True
    
    Dim row As Range
    Dim col As Range
           
    For Each row In rng.Rows
        If row.RowHeight = 0 Then
            IsVisible = False
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next
        
    For Each col In rng.Columns
        If col.ColumnWidth = 0 Then
            IsVisible = False
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next
End Function

Given a range, this function returns true if every cell in the range is visible (non-zero row height and column width). The way Excel works, the Row Height of a row hidden by the Autofilter is reported as zero. Therefore, IsVisible returns false when given a reference to a cell in a hidden AutoFiltered row. Of course, it also returns False for cells in manually hidden rows and columns, but if you're careful, you can avoid that.

For a simple use case, this function can be used to generate alternating color bars that always alternate regardless of the AutoFilter settings. To set it up, Put TRUE in the topmost cell of a free column next to the AutoFilter to be colored. Below the TRUE, fill down with a formula like this: =IF(isvisible(D2),NOT(D1),D1). This formula inverts the value in the column, but only for cells that are visible. This guarantees that regardless of the AutoFilter settings, this column will always alternate TRUE/FALSE in the set of visible rows. This column can then be used to drive a conditional format that highlights alternating visible rows.

A couple sidenotes:

• This function works because adjusting an AutoFilter triggers recalculation, and Excel notices that this function depends on row heights. For hiding columns, it's a lot less reliable. All the calls to IsVisible have to be forced to recompute after the column is hidden or displayed. To do this, IsVisible can be marked as volatile and recalculation forced by pressing F9. This is a lousy solution.
• To optimize performance, the function short-circuits its search. The Exit Function's bail out of the calculation as soon as the first hidden row or column is discovered.
• Excel's SUBTOTAL intrinsic function is also sensitive to AutoFilter settings.

I really liked This post by Dick Kusleika, over on Daily Dose of Excel. I'm a big fan of controlling frequently used options with keyboard shortcuts. To riff on Mr. Kusleika's post a little, here's a refinement I've found useful in the past for macros like these. Basically this allows the same macro to toggle a state as well as non-destructively display the current state.

The first time the macro MaybeToggleMAR is invoked, it displays the current state in the status bar, and sets a timer to expire in 3 seconds. If the macro is invoked a second time before the timer expires (easy to do if it's bound to a keystroke) the state is toggled. Technically speaking, the trickiest bit is that the function that sets the 3 second timer also has to handle cancelling any previous instance of the same timer. It works without the timer cancellation, but without it, the UI behaves oddly after multiple keypresses in rapid succession.

Chip Pearson's website has useful content discussing the Excel API's for Timers and the Status Bar.

Here's the code: to use it, stick it in a module and bind MaybeToggleMAR to the keyboard shortcut of your choice.

Option Explicit
Private MARChangesEnabled As Boolean

Public NextDisableTime As Double

Sub DisableMARChanges()
    Application.StatusBar = False
    MARChangesEnabled = False
End Sub

Sub DisableMARChangesSoon()
    On Error Resume Next
    Application.OnTime NextDisableTime, "DisableMARChanges", , False
    
    NextDisableTime = Now + TimeSerial(0, 0, 3)
    Application.OnTime NextDisableTime, "DisableMARChanges", , True
End Sub


Sub MaybeToggleMAR()
    Dim NewStatusText As String
    
    NewStatusText = ""
    
    If MARChangesEnabled Then
        Application.MoveAfterReturn = Not Application.MoveAfterReturn
        NewStatusText = "Status changed: "
    Else
        MARChangesEnabled = True
        NewStatusText = "Second press will change status: "
    End If
            
    If Application.MoveAfterReturn Then
        NewStatusText = NewStatusText & "MoveAfterReturn Enabled"
    Else
        NewStatusText = NewStatusText & "MoveAfterReturn Disabled"
    End If
                
    Application.StatusBar = NewStatusText
    
    DisableMARChangesSoon
End Sub