Changing text color can highlight specific areas on your worksheet that may otherwise go unnoticed. Specific problems, important information, and status can all be conveyed using colors to give your users more information at a glance.
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How to Change Text Color
Changing the text color of a cell or range of cells is very easy with only a few steps to follow.
1. Select the cells that you would like to format, this can be a single cell, or range of cells.
2. Under the Home Tab on the top ribbon bar, navigate to the Font section, and click the Font Color option.
Clicking the "A" with the color bar under it will apply that specific color to your selected cells. Clicking the down arrow, will open up more color options.
3. Select the color you would like to apply to the text.
How to Change Text Color Using Conditional Formatting
By using conditional formatting, you can save yourself the hassle of manually going through and formatting each cell. Instead, you can select a large range of cells, and set up rules to dictate font color automatically.
Using conditional formatting is key when formatting cells that may change over time. That way, your colors update as new data and results are calculated.
To set up conditional formatting, there are a few steps to follow.
1. Select the cells that you would like to format, this can be a single cell, or range of cells.
2. Under the Home Tab on the top ribbon bar, navigate to the Styles selection, and select Conditional Formatting.
3. Create new Conditional Formatting rules. In this example, we'll use the "Format only cells that contain" option, and set up rules to change text color based on the cell value.
4. Set up the rule based on the results you want to see and hit ok.
In this case, we're formatting only cells with the cell value equal to "Good", and using the format option, changing the font color to green.
Repeat this process to set up rules for each formatting condition that you need. In this example, we'll repeat this process, setting "Good" to green, "On Time" to yellow, and "Bad" to red.
Now, every time those cells update with new values, the text color will update alongside it, completely hands off.
To check and edit the rules that you have already set up, under Conditional Formatting, select the Manage Rules option at the bottom of the list.
This will open up the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager and will display all currently active rules.
