New Features in Excel 2010 Conditional Formatting

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Excel 2010 - Conditional Formatting - Review, Improvements and Demo

Conditional formatting is one of favorite features in Excel. CF has helped me save the day at work more than a dozen occasions. I almost became project manager just because I knew how to make a gantt chart in excel using conditional formatting. I have written extensively about it.

So, I was naturally curious to explore what is new in Excel 2010’s Conditional Formatting. In this post, I will share some of the coolest improvements in CF.

1. You can refer to data in other worksheets now

Refer values in other worksheets - excel conditional formatting
This is the best new addition to CF capabilities in Excel 2010. Now we can refer to data in other worksheets without using any named ranges or copying the data over to primary sheet.

2. Solid Data Bars, Finally!

In Excel 2007, MS introduced a new feature called “data bars”. It felt like an exciting thing, except for one gnawing problem. The bars have gradients. So, not only they looked ugly, but they were also difficult to read (also, they were inaccurate at default settings).

Thankfully MS rectified these problems and significantly improved data bars in Excel 2010.

Now, you can,

  • Create data bars with solid fill
  • Apply borders to data bars (so that even gradient fills look elegant)
  • Have negative data bars
  • Have an axis so that comparison is easy

Here is a small comparison between Excel 2007 & Excel 2010 Data Bars:

Data Bars in Excel 2007 vs. Excel 2010 - a comparison

Using data bars to create in-cell progress charts:

You can use data bars to create in-cell progress charts (or thermo-meter charts) like this:

An In-cell Progress Chart - Excel Conditional Formatting Trick

* Hint: The trick is to use cell background color along with data bar.

[Related: Jon Peltier has written a beautiful article reviewing data bars in Excel 2010.]

3. More Icon Sets in Conditional Formatting

Although I rarely use icons in conditional formatting, I am happy to report that MS has added 3 new sets of Icons to the conditional formatting library.

Icon Sets in Excel 2010 Conditional Formatting - Compared with Excel 2007

Also, you can mix and match icons depending on the rules (how I wish they didnt allow this. Mix and match can produce more evil combinations than good ones.)
Mix and Match Icons in Excel 2010 CF - Use with care

What do you think  about new CF Features in Excel 2010?

I am excited to try the data bars in real-world project. I find the possibility of referring to other sheets very good. Also, I am not sure if its just me, but Excel 2010 conditional formatting feels fast. In fact, not just CF, almost everything in Excel 2010 feels fast and responsive.

What about you? How are you planning to use Excel 2010 CF features in your work? Please tell us using comments.

PS: By leaving a comment, you can win a copy of Office 2010 – Home & Student Edition. Contest sponsored by Microsoft India.

References: Excel Conditional Formatting Improvements [MSDN blog]

Related: Excel 2010 – What is new? | Overview of Excel 2010 Sparklines

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share this tip with your colleagues

Excel and Power BI tips - Chandoo.org Newsletter

Get FREE Excel + Power BI Tips

Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.

Learn & be awesome.

Welcome to Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.

Read my storyFREE Excel tips book

Overall I learned a lot and I thought you did a great job of explaining how to do things. This will definitely elevate my reporting in the future.
Rebekah S
Reporting Analyst
Excel formula list - 100+ examples and howto guide for you

From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.

Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.

Advanced Pivot Table tricks

Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.

Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.

26 Responses to “FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup]”

  1. J. J. says:

    Nice roundup! Do you know of any one-page spreadsheets which will be updated by an administrator after each game? Would be nice to be able to print out the latest results whenever I feel like checking them as I probably won't be following closely every day.

    I actually haven't tried any of the above ones yet, but I thought I'd mention this one that I found which makes a nice one-page form you can fill in dynamically. http://exceltemplate.net/sports/world-cup-2010-schedule-and-scoresheet/

  2. Diego Garcia says:

    I would like to recommend you these one: http://www.anotagol.com/
    You can choose your interface language (english, spanish, italian, portuguese, german or french) and your country for the timezone of match. I like it very much.

  3. [...] Passend zu gerade laufenden Fußball-WM gibt es auf Chandoo.org alles wissenswerte über Excel-Anwendungen für den Fußball-Fan. [...]

  4. Rohit1409 says:

    Great!!!

    I strongly recommend this :

    http://www.en.excel-soccer-2010.de/downloads

    Chandoo how you found this ...

  5. Chandoo says:

    @Rohit.. really beautiful file. I missed it during my research. Now, I recommend it. 🙂

  6. Mourad Louha says:

    Hi Chandoo - thanks for the recommandation 🙂 - Regards

  7. [...] Excel, then print it on the other side of your Match Schedule from step 2 above. There are several other Excel spreadsheet templates you can download, but this is probably the only one-page version you can find; plus, it [...]

  8. Robert says:

    Does anybody know how to re-create this(?): http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
    ...or do you know where a template can be found? I am DYING to have something like this on my site. When I found it, I had been looking for the longest time for a circular calendar. I found a couple that weren't adequate. Then I stumbled upon this one and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. If anyone can lead me in the right direction, I would be eternally grateful!

    Thanks in advance!
    Robert

  9. Chandoo says:

    @Robert...

    Doing something like that is a lot of work. You can probably get it done with some hired help from a flash developer.

  10. Pedro Wave says:

    @Robert, the World Cup flash in the Spanish Marca newspaper is impresive, but not much as my own animated spreadsheet with the Goals of 2010 World Cup South Africa in Excel that I just published into my blog:
    http://pedrowave.blogspot.com/2010/06/goals-of-2010-world-cup-south-africa-in.html

    Download from here:
    http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.office.live.com/view.aspx/.Public/Goals%20South%20Africa%20Animated.xlsx

    And start to enter the goals of the rest of matches.

  11. Neil says:

    Has anyone seen, or made, a Spreadsheet where you can record the scorers and see a 'top scorers' chart. Would be a nice enhancement

  12. Chandoo says:

    @Neil... checkout this one http://www.inflexionary.com/sports/world-cup-2010-excel

    it uses macros to fetch scores from web (and provides very comprehensive analysis too)

    @All.. Thanks for the comments. I have updated the post with few more links now.

  13. Sergio Mathias says:

    Hi,
    Check this dashboards too:
    http://dashboards.org/world-cup-dashboards-and-visualizations/
    😉

  14. [...] Here is a collection of FIFA World Cup Spreadsheets if you are more in to that sort of thing. | [...]

  15. [...] Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]

  16. [...] World Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]

  17. Hey, you missed ours! It has everything you need and more, but not a whole pile of silly extras (National Anthems, etc).  I'll be making another one for the 2014 world cup.  We had over 4000 hits on it!

  18. Neil says:

    @Michael Harwood.

    Where is it then? You should have posted a link  

  19. phillip says:

    Sie sollten an einem Wettbewerb teil zu nehmen für einen der besten Blogs im Web. Ich werde empfehlen Sie diese Seite!
    Google translation: You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!

  20. [...] and welcome to the forum, Maybe these similar spreadsheets might give you a few initial ideas: FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup] | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online If you have specific areas / formulae / layout choices for parts of your spreadsheet that you are [...]

  21. Petros says:

    Calling all football fans around the globe! The biggest football festival will kick off on the 12th June 2014 and everyone is placing their bets of who will have the honour of lifting the golden trophy.

    Use our free interactive Excel templatel to predict the World cup finalists ! No macros !

    http://www.spreadsheet1.com/world-cup-2014-free-excel-prediction-template.html

  22. marten says:

    I also made a Worldcup-tracker, with MS Access, which can also generate reports in Excel
    e.g. a match-schedule with locations on y-axis and dates on x-axis, see:
    http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/excel-with-match-schedule-for-2014-fifa.html
    and:
    http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/match-access-app-to-track-world-cup.html

  23. Vivek Ranjan says:

    where can i find raw data in excel file format of fifa world cups (1930-2014)

Leave a Reply