How to Customize the Appearance of Conditional Formats Such as Data Bars, Color Scales in MS Excel

Customize the Appearance of Conditional Formats Such as Data Bars, Color Scales, and Icon Sets in MS Excel
When you need conditional formatting in your Microsoft Office Excel 2007 worksheet, try one of the new data visualization options, including color scales, icon sets, and data bars. You can apply these formats with just a click from galleries of preset options, or customize your own conditional formatting rules.

To access the new conditional formats, on the Home tab, in the Styles section, click Conditional Formatting, and then point to Data Bars, Color Scales, or Icon Sets. Or to create a custom rule for one of these formats, at the bottom of the Conditional Formatting menu, click New Rule. In the New Formatting Rule dialog box, select the rule type Format all cells based on their values to use the new data visualization tools. In the lower half of the box, you can then choose among data bars, color scales, and icon sets; specify conditions for each formatting type; and customize colors for data bars or color scales.

Note: In Excel 2007, it’s also possible to edit existing conditional formatting rules. To access existing rules for editing, at the bottom of the Conditional Formatting menu, click Manage Rules.