How to create conditional formatting rules for lists

Directly to concise step-by-step plan

With the 'Conditional Formatting' feature, you can give a field or row a different format based on a certain condition. This feature is available behind every list in MKG and can be used in various ways. In this article, we follow the most comprehensive approach..

Step 1: Create a new rule

Right-click on the column header of the column for which you want to create the format. Then select 'Conditional Formatting' and click on 'Manage Rules'. In the pop-up that appears, click on New Rule… to create a new formatting rule.

Step 2: Select the type of rule

Once you create a new rule, a new pop-up appears. At the top of this pop-up, you can choose what type of rule you want to format:

• Format all cells based on their values: This allows you to assign a certain color gradient based on a value. For example, you can set the color of a field to get darker as the value increases. You have 4 formatting styles to choose from, so you can easily customize the format to your needs.
• Format only cells that contain: This allows you to color all cells that contain a certain value or a certain date.
• Format only top or bottom ranked values: This allows you to color the highest or lowest percentage of the values in a table, for example, the lowest 10% of the values.
• Format only values that are above or below average: This allows you to color the values that are above or below the average of the values in the table.
• Format only unique or duplicate values: This highlights values that occur only once (i.e., are unique) or highlights values that occur multiple times (duplicate values).
• Format only changed values: This highlights cells whose value has changed.
• Use a formula to determine which cells to format: This allows you to color cells based on a specified formula. Since you can do a lot with formulas, this option is useful in many different situations.

Select the type that applies to you and choose your format in the 'Edit the Rule Description' block.

Step 3: Choose your format

Once you have chosen the type of rule and filled in the rule description, click on Format. This opens another pop-up where you can set the font, text color, and cell color. You have 3 tabs for this:

• Font: Choose how your text looks. For example, determine the style (such as italic) and the color, or strike through the text.
• Fill: Choose the background color that fills the entire cell.
• Preset Display: Do you not want to set the colors yourself? Then use this tab to choose from a list of standard formatting templates.

Click OK if you are satisfied with your chosen format and then click OK again to create the rule. Note: the rule now only appears in the list of created rules. It is only applied when you click OK or Apply in the 'Manage Conditional Formatting Rules' pop-up. 

Concise step-by-step plan 'Create Conditional Formatting'

Because there are so many options with conditional formatting, we use an example situation in this concise step-by-step plan, so we can show all the steps from start to finish. We take the delivery date of a random sales order as a starting point and apply a formula to it.