Counting Colors from Conditional Formats

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 4, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Ronald has a worksheet that utilizes conditional formatting. The conditions result in the cells being different colors. He wants to count the number of cells that are red in the worksheet. He knows how to create a macro that will examine the cell color and do a count if a cell is formatted directly as red, but the macro won't work with cells that are conditionally formatted. Ronald wants to know if there is a way to count these conditionally red cells, as well.

You cannot directly check in a macro what the color of a cell is based on a conditional format. There are ways you can work around this with a macro, but it is not for the faint-of-heart. The following page on Chip Pearson's site demonstrates the difficulty in determining conditional colors:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CFColors.htm

Given the difficulty of the task, it may just be easier to recreate the conditions within the macro, and then see which cells meet these conditions. The result is that you count cells matching conditions rather than count cells that are colored red as a result of those conditions. This should yield the same count of cells, but is much easier to handle programmatically.

Of course, the only caveat to this solution is that you will need to keep the conditions in the macro and the conditions in the conditional formats in sync with each other. If you change one and fail to change the other, then you won't get the desired results.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2873) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Jumping to the Start or End of a Document

When creating macros, it is often necessary to move the insertion point around the document so that text can be processed ...

Discover More

Creating an Index Entry for a Range of Pages

Putting together an index for your documents can be challenging, but Word provides some great tools to make the task ...

Discover More

Rotating Fractions in a Text Box

Rotating graphics in Word is not always straight-forward, but it can be done. The tools on the Drawing toolbar allow you ...

Discover More

Solve Real Business Problems Master business modeling and analysis techniques with Excel and transform data into bottom-line results. This hands-on, scenario-focused guide shows you how to use the latest Excel tools to integrate data from multiple tables. Check out Microsoft Excel 2013 Data Analysis and Business Modeling today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Conditionally Making a Sound

Need to have a sound played if a certain condition is met? It is rather easy to do if you use a user-defined function to ...

Discover More

Conditional Formats that Distinguish Blanks and Zeroes

Conditional formatting is a great tool. You may need to use this tool to tell the difference between cells that are empty ...

Discover More

Changing Shading when a Column Value Changes

If you have a data table in a worksheet, and you want to shade various rows based on whatever is in the first column, ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 7 - 7?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.