Use conditional formatting rules in Google Sheets

A teacher can highlight test scores to see which students scored less than 80%.

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open a spreadsheet in the Google Sheets app.
2. Select the test scores.
3. Tap Format   Conditional formatting.
4. Under "Format cells if," tap Less than. If there's already a rule, tap it or ADD  Less than.
5. Tap Value or formula and enter "0.8."
6. To choose a red color, tap the red box.
7. Tap SAVE. The low scores will be highlighted in red.

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open a spreadsheet in the Google Sheets app.
2. Tap Format  Conditional formatting.
3. At the top, choose an option:
   • Selected range: Shows the rules that intersect with the selected range.
   • All: Shows all rules on the sheet.
4. To return to your spreadsheet, tap Done .

You can use custom formulas to apply formatting to one or more cells based on the contents of other cells.

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open a spreadsheet in the Google Sheets app.
2. Select the cells you want to format.
3. Tap Format Conditional formatting.
4. Under the "Format cells if" drop-down menu, tap Custom formula. If there's already a rule, tap it or ADD  Custom formula. 
5. Tap "Value or formula" and add the formula and rules.
6. Tap SAVE.

Note: Formulas can only reference the same sheet, using standard notation (='sheetname'!cell). To reference another sheet in the formula, use the INDIRECT function.

Example 1

To highlight when there's more than one occurrence of the same value in your data:

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open a spreadsheet in the Google Sheets app.
2. Select the range you want to format. For example, cells A1 to A100.
3. Tap Format  Conditional formatting.
4. Under the "Format cells if" drop-down menu, tap Custom formula. If there's already a rule, tap it or ADD  Custom formula. 
5. Enter the rule for the first row. In this case the rule would be, "=COUNTIF($A$1:$A$100,A1)>1."
6. Choose other formatting properties.
7. Tap SAVE.

Example 2

To format an entire row based on the value of one of the cells in that row:

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open a spreadsheet in the Google Sheets app.
2. Select the range you want to format, for example, columns A:E.
3. Tap Format  Conditional formatting.
4. Under the "Format cells if" drop-down menu, tap Custom formula. If there's already a rule, tap it or ADD  Custom formula. 
5. Enter the rule for the first row. For example, if you want to make the whole row green if the value in column B is "Yes", write a formula like "=$B1="Yes"."
6. Choose other formatting properties.
7. Tap SAVE.

Absolute vs. relative references

Often, you will need to add dollar signs ($) in front of letters and numbers in formulas so that the formatting is applied using absolute references as opposed to relative references.

You can use wildcard characters to match multiple expressions. Wildcard characters can be used with the "Text contains" or "Text does not contain" fields while formatting.

• To match any single character, use a question mark (?). For example, a text rule containing "a?c" would format cells with "abc," but not "ac" or "abbc."
• To match zero (0) or more characters, use an asterisk (*) . For example, a text rule containing "a*c" would format cells with "abc," "ac," and "abbc" but not "ab" or "ca."
• To match a question mark or asterisk in text, you can escape the wildcard characters by adding a tilde (~) in front of them. For example, a text rule containing "a~?c" would format cells with "a?c" but not "abc" or "a~?c."