2. Introduction
Unfortunately, many users don’t use conditional formatting in their work. What is
conditional formatting and what it does??
At first, we define some terms:
Format cells – it is customizing of cell view. We can change the following options:
• Background color of cell;
• Showing, color and type of cell borders;
• Options of text view: vertical and horizontal text alignment in cell, rotation of text in
cell, text color, text effects, shadow of text, font and font style (bold, italic);
• Number format: Number, Percent, Currency, Date, Time, Scientific, Fraction, Bool-
ean value, Text.
Formatting of cells is used in order to highlight important information in spread-
sheet and to ease perception. Classic example is color highlighting of cells: green, yellow
and red. User shouldn’t think about meaning of numbers in cells, rows or columns. Color
indication of cells is more intuitive for people. Of course, you have to first understand
what means each type of condition and which result you want to achieve.
Cell style – it is a user defined set of options of cell customization, saved with
unique name for this document. LibreOffice Calc already has some pre-built cell styles,
that can be used for conditional formatting. User can create his own cell styles or change
existing styles.
Conditional formatting – it automatically applies cell style to cell or cell range
when user defined condition is performed. For example, you define automatically green
highlighting of cells, if cell value is between 80 and 100; or green highlight cell if there is
word “Russia” and red highlight if there is word “USA” in cell. If value in cell is changed,
then the formatting of cell will change too depending on the defined conditions.
Attention!
Make sure, that item Data►Calculate►AutoCalculate is active. It is need for condi-
tional formatting to work correctly.
So, by using conditional formatting, it allows user to forget about formatting of cells
when changing values in cells, LibreOffice Calc takes care of changing cell format itself.
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