OpenOffice Calc: Use conditional formatting

You can use conditional formatting to highlight certain information in a table in OpenOffice Calc. For example, expenses incurred in a cost and revenue calculation can be automatically colored red and income green. This requires several steps, but they are not overly complicated.

Create a new style in OpenOffice Calc

First, you need to create a style that you can then use in the appropriate cells.

1. Press F11 to go to the "Styles" menu.
2. Right-click in the window and select "New ...".
3. Enter a name for the style in the dialog and format the style according to your ideas under the tabs. Later, every cell that uses this style will look like this. For example, you can select a green background for earnings in the "Background" tab.

Apply conditional formatting to desired cells

Now you can set the cells you want to use the previously created formatting under certain conditions:

1. Select the cells for which the conditional formatting is to take effect.
2. From the "Format" menu, select "Conditional Formatting".
3. Create your condition here. If you would like to create more than one condition, you must select the checkboxes next to "Condition 2" etc. Note that the formatting that applies first is always used. For example, if conditions 1 and 2 apply, the formatting according to condition 1 is selected.
4. In our example, we choose the condition as follows: We leave the first selection list at "Cell value is" and in the second choose "greater than". In the text field we enter the number 0 and select "Revenue" from the list with the styles.
5. If the conditions you find under "Cell value is" are too simple for you, you can select "Formula is" and use the usual formulas in conditional formatting.

OpenOffice version 4.0.0 was used. You can find more practical tips on OpenOffice here. We present some useful extensions of OpenOffice in a picture gallery.