March 13th, 2005
Conditional formatting is a mechanism that allows the user to apply formatting to
a cell or range of cells based on defined conditions. If the rules (conditions) are met, then the specified formatting is applied.
In OOo Calc, you can apply up to 3 rules in a cell or range of cells.
In the example below, we have an array of numbers. To illustrate how conditional formatting works, we will apply different formatting to those cells whose values are greater than the average of the range.
We first need to define a new formatting style.
Apply the desired formatting to an isolated cell and invoke the Styles and Formatting dialog as shown below.
Here, we click on the New Style from Selection icon.
This allows us to add our own custom style to the Style catalog.
We will now make use of our newly defined style in the Conditional Formatting dialog, which is enabled as shown below.
We select Condition 1 and the settings are shown below. The Cell STyle drop down list allows to to select any of the styles from the catalog - including any custom style we have defined.
You must use absolute addressing when referencing cells and cell ranges.
The final result of applying conditional formatting on the selected range of cells.
See also:
Creating Custom Cell Styles
