Conditional formatting not working

**michmat120** · 12-13-2013, 02:49 PM

I have applied conditional formatting so that if the cell value is less than .75 (which shows as a percentage) the font turns red, if the cell value is greater than or equal to .75 it will turn green. This seemed to work find yesterday but today when I test it out, the cells are only turning green even if the cell value is less than .75.

When I highlight the cells that are not formatting correctly and select Manage Rules, the rule for it to turn red is still there so I just resave the rule as is, and then it works.

Why is this happening?

**etaf** · 12-13-2013, 02:50 PM

can you attach the spreadsheet so we can see- make sure there's no confidential or personal info , as this is a public forum

**newdoverman** · 12-13-2013, 03:34 PM

I have noticed some very strange behaviour at times with Conditional Formatting (I have Excel 2010) along the lines that you are talking about. When this happens I go into Conditional Formatting Manage Rules and the formulae for some of the rules have changed to have really weird cell references. Is this what is happening to you?

Have you by chance added data to the range with the conditional formatting and then copied the data within the range? I just did this and it totally messed up the formatting.

It seems that the copy procedure inserts imposes the formatting of the copied cells that the Conditional Formatting will not change unless the data is deleted and new data entered.

**michmat120** · 12-13-2013, 04:16 PM

I tried to attach my worksheet but I think restrictions on my office PC are causing me to have to continuously log back into the website to access things like managing attachments, adding reputations, etc. and then even when I log in again, I can't do these things because it wants me to log in...again!

Anyway, yes, it may have something to do with copying and pasting the cells that contained the conditional formatting. I needed to apply the formulas & conditional formatting to a number of other cells. I am going to try re-applying the conditional formatting to all of the cells without copying and pasting and see if that helps.

What I also noticed is that if I had data in the source cells (ex. A1=10 B1=5) and then I copy the formula =B1/A1 into C1, then the conditional formatting in C1 works right away. However if I copy the formula into C1 BEFORE there is any data in B1, the conditional formatting will not work properly after I have entered data in B1.