Had been formatting spreadsheets wrong for 3 years until a coworker in Austin pointed it out

I was manually coloring cells to track project statuses in Excel, like red for late and green for done. Last Tuesday, my coworker Jenna glanced at my screen and asked why I wasn't using conditional formatting. She showed me in 2 minutes how to automate it, and I felt like an idiot for wasting hundreds of hours. Has anyone else had a basic tool feature blow their mind way too late?

3 comments

3 Comments

violamurray1mo ago

Oh man, that's a huge time saver once you find it!

nathana481mo agoMost Upvoted

Does it actually stay consistent across different browsers for you? I had one that worked great on Chrome but kept messing up in Firefox and I could never pin down why. Was there a specific trick you used to set it up or did you just stumble into it? Just trying to figure out if the effort is worth it or if I should keep hunting for something better.

oliver21mo ago

Nah man, the browser thing is real. I had the same issue with Firefox until I realized the trick is to use the "New Rule" option instead of the basic conditional formatting menu. Most people just click the button and pick a preset, but that's where the browser quirks mess things up. If you build the rule manually with formulas it stays consistent no matter what browser you're on. Took me like 3 months to figure that out after switching from Chrome. Just make sure you're using absolute references in your formulas or it'll shift weird when you copy it across cells.