Excel tip – alternate row shading

closeThis post was published 5 years 7 months 18 days ago. Therefore, it may well be out of date. Do not reply on the contents of this post being accurate.

I keep having to look up Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature to automatically shade alternate rows in a spreadsheet.

Therefore, I’m including it here so that I know where to look it up next time I need to use the function.

  1. Select the range that you want to format
  2. Choose Format, Conditional Formatting
  3. In the Conditional Formatting dialog box, select Formula Is from the drop-down list, and enter this formula:
    =MOD(ROW(),2)=0.
  4. Click the Format button, select the Patterns tab, and specify a color for the shaded rows
  5. Click OK twice to return to your worksheet
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2 Responses to Excel tip – alternate row shading

  1. Spencer says:

    Great tip i also found that If you want to take the rule off the Top/Heading row use this formula:

    =IF(ROW()>1,MOD(ROW(),2)=1)

    Which means apply the rule to every row bigger than 1.
    Which will apply the formatting to everyrow apart from the top row.

  2. james says:

    Hi Spencer, thanks for the useful tip.

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