highlight differences between two columns, but ignore blanks

**acp** · 02-03-2012, 03:05 PM

I have two columns that contain mostly the same info and I want to highlight the ones that are different. The instructions in this thread worked great, but the problem is some of my cells are blank and Excel is highlighting these, too. Is there a way to tell Excel to compare cells only if they both have data in them?

Thanks in advance.

**Fotis1991** · 02-03-2012, 03:13 PM

Hi

maybe something like this, in conditional format rules?

AND(A1<>"";A1=B1)

Hopes to helps you.

**acp** · 02-03-2012, 04:50 PM

Hi, Fotis, thanks so much for such a quick reply. However, I'm not quite sure where to put the text you provided. I've played around with it, but I just keep getting errors. Can you give me a little more info?

Thanks!

**Fotis1991** · 02-04-2012, 03:11 AM

Hi

Take a look to the example.

Format>>Conditional Format>>See the rules!

Hope to helps you.

**acp** · 02-06-2012, 10:23 AM

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me with this. I just changed one of the "equal" signs to "not equal to" so I could find the ones that are different and it worked perfectly. It will make my life so much easier (I had been doing this by hand in the past)!