Excel for many is an especially complex program full of boxes that is used in companies to keep accounts. That part is true, but not unique, as this is a spreadsheet program that can also be useful in more home environments. In fact, there are many individual users who make use of it, for example to make simple accounts or to keep the household finances.
For those who are not very clear, we will tell you that when talking about this Microsoft software , we are actually talking about an application to make spreadsheets. In fact, it could be considered as the proposal of this type par excellence for many years. As perhaps many of you already know, here we refer to a powerful program that is included in the Office suite and is used in all kinds of environments. Therefore we can already forget the label of the program for professionals that it has for some.
The importance of using the Excel interface well
It is true that we can currently find other proposals of this type on the Internet. What’s more, we can affirm that many of them try to imitate the behavior of Excel in terms of functionality and appearance . But this is a program that has been around for a long time and is characterized by its cell interface, among many other things.
Keep in mind that getting the most out of this spreadsheet application is somewhat complicated. This is mainly due to the fact that it initially has a huge number of functions of all kinds. You also have to know that here we can use formulas and different types of internal programming. In turn, in addition to numbers, we can use other elements such as graphics , images, tables , etc. But one of the things that most attracts the attention of the program, at least in the first instance, is its user interface. The reason for all this is that those who are not too used to using these types of applications, could be a little intimidated by this.
As many of you already know, this interface is full of small cells where we must enter data, generally numerical . At the same time, these elements will help us to use formulas and other elements. Of course, we can confirm that once we get used to it, we will see that it is the most efficient system for working with spreadsheets of this type and their corresponding numerical data. Another section that we must also take into consideration is that this program allows us to customize and adapt to a great extent this interface that we are talking about.
How to highlight alternate rows in an Excel sheet
In fact this is the case that we are going to talk about in these same lines. We are going to show you how to highlight by means of colors, certain alternate rows of the same spreadsheet. For example, when we have a large amount of data in the project, this is something that makes it difficult to read the data as such. At the same time, it is more difficult to distinguish the information that belongs to each of the rows. Thus, to avoid this problem we can highlight the alternate rows of a different color.
It is worth mentioning that we have several methods to achieve this that we are commenting on, some more effective than others.
Highlight alternate rows by hand
Therefore, first of all we will tell you that some of the users who need to do this that we are commenting on, do it by themselves by hand. This is something that can be accomplished by first marking the alternate rows, and then changing the fill color.
However, if we have a large amount of data in it, this may not be the most effective system. In addition, the process can become a hassle. Therefore we recommend that for the change to be faster as well as effective, we try other things.
Highlight rows with table format function
As we mentioned, for all this there are better methods that will allow us to highlight alternate rows in a document that we are creating in Microsoft Excel . Therefore, another of the methods that we can use in this same sense, is this that we are going to show you. We are actually referring to the ability to convert a certain range of cells into a separate Excel table.
Therefore, for this, it is enough that we make the selection of the set of cells in which we want to highlight the alternate rows. Then we go to the Start menu option and click the Format as table button. A wide variety of design samples will appear here. Therefore now we no longer have to select the one that suits our needs. Generally here in this case we are interested in the samples of the Light and Medium categories.
How to highlight alternate rows with Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature
This is the most effective and useful system that you can find for this that we tell you. Although it may seem a bit more complex at first, it will pay off in the long run. Therefore, for this we start by selecting the set of cells on which we will apply the conditional formatting. After that we go to the Home tab and click on the Conditional Formatting button, where we choose the New Rule Option.
Once in the new window that appears, we select the option Use a formula that determines the cells to apply the format. Thus, in the window that appears below we see a box that says Format values where this formula is true. Well, in it we write the following formula :
=RESIDUO(FILA();2)=0
Next, we click on the Format button so that we can choose the desired color that will be seen alternatively.
This will allow us to distinguish the consecutive rows much better and thus be able to work in Excel in a much more efficient and simple way. Of course, be careful because in other versions of the program the formula to use was this:
=RESIDUO(FILA(),2)=0
However, now it no longer works, so we must use the format that we have previously explained.
Now, in the event that you want to achieve this instead of with rows, with the columns of the spreadsheet, the process is exactly the same as described. The only difference is that in this case you will have to use the following formula:
=RESIDUO(COLUMNA(),2)=0
