One of the most popular posts on this blog is how to become excel conditional formatting rock star. Quite a few commenters there asked me if there is a way to get more than 3 (or 4) conditional formats in excel 2003. Like what you see below:
You can get more than three conditional formats in excel using VBA / macros. Last week I had sometime to put together a simple VBA script using which you can get more than 3 conditional formats in Microsoft excel. Just follow the below 3 steps.
- Download the VBA Macro for getting more than 3 conditional formats
Just copy the VBA Macro cFormat() to your workbook or place it in wherever you keep all your macros. - In your workbook, define 3 named ranges.
data2use: This range contains the cells to be formatted.
conditions2use: This range is identical in shape and size to data2use and contains conditions for the data range start from 1 to n (n being the maximum number of conditional formats your would like to have)
formats2use: This range contains “n” cells each formatted in a way you would like to format the cells in data2use range.See this illustration to understand how these 3 ranges are used to create more than 3 conditional formats:
- Finally hit Alt+F8 (or menu > tools > macro > macros) and run the cFormat macro. The conditional formatting macro you have just downloaded will format the “data2use” range by scanning “conditions2use” range and using the formats in “formats2use” range. If you are curious to see how the VBA script looked like, see the cFormat macro code
- Make sure you have downloaded the workbook with code for getting more than 3 conditional formats in excel
What would you use this trick for? A giant heat map, project plan … ?
2 Responses to “Top 10 Power BI Interview Questions & Answers”
Hello...
In Power BI I have data that includes months by name only (e.g. May, April, December...)
I need to build charts etc. but i need the months to go chronologically... not alphabetically... I cannot seem to find the fix to this.... once again, my data does NOT have an actual date attached to it (like 02/01/2023)....only month names... can i use a helper table wher i id the month names as numbers 1 thru 12? and if so, how do i manage this to work for me ?
Thank you.
~Keith
You need to setup an extra table to map each month name to a running number. A simple 12 row table like
Jan 1
Feb 2
Mar 3
..
Dec 12
Then create a relationship between this month table and your month column
Now, go to "table view" in Power BI and set the sort by column to month number for the month name column on this new table.
Finally, use the new table's month name whenever you need to refer to the month name in the visuals.
They will be chronologically arranged.