This update exclusively focuses on Microsoft Excel’s conditional formatting feature. It’s a challenging implementation on web applications and we dedicated this entire development cycle to all its quirks.
For those of you who are not too familiar with conditional formatting, this functionality effectively allows you to modify the style properties of a cell, such as its background color, based on a value outcome or statement. Business professionals use this feature extensively to make tables with walls of numbers much easier to read.
Let’s look at conditional formatting in action within a web application. Starting off with a simple model, this personal budgeting calculator receives user input, and compares the user’s budget with their actual expenditure.
The differences, or the “Diff” values, are highlighted in green, yellow, or red based on the difference of the two values. Over budget is indicated by a red background, under budget is indicated by green, and yellow cells indicate equivalency. Using this approach, we can more clearly delineate which areas of our budget require more attention without having to review the table in its entirety when evaluating our expense distribution. Conditional formatting simplifies this process significantly.
You can access the tool and run a test case of your own finance statement here.
Implementing this handy Excel feature doesn’t require any additional effort: the conversion wizard automatically detects the conditional formatting selections from your workbook, so no extra action is necessary. We are positive that our users will love the convenience of conditional formatting in their web applications.
Be sure to sign up for a free account if you haven’t already done so and give your spreadsheets a breath of new life.
