Hints - Microsoft Excel - Hide Cell Contents When Printing

You can use Excel conditional formatting to hide cells when printing. In this example, the contents of cells B2:F4 are changed to white font, if cell H1 contains an x.

To print with the cell contents hidden, type an x in cell H1. To display the cell contents, delete the x in cell H1.

Shade Alternating Rows

You can use Excel conditional formatting to shade alternating rows on the worksheet. 

Shade Bands of Rows

You can use Excel conditional formatting to shade alternating rows in a filtered list. 

Create Coloured Shapes

You can use Excel conditional formatting and the Wingding font to create coloured shapes in a cell. In this example, coloured shapes will appear in cells C3:C7, depending on the value in the adjacent cell in column B.

If the value is less than 10, a red circle will appear, if the value is greater than 30, a green square will appear. Otherwise, a yellow diamond will appear.

Create Coloured Icons

In Excel 2007 and later, you can use icon sets to highlight the results in a group of cells. In Excel 2010 and later, you can customize these sets, but can't change the color of the icons.

If you don't have icons, or want to change the colors, you can use symbols, and a formula in an adjacent cell, to create your own icon sets. 

Or, you can use custom Number Formats, as shown in the sample file, on the ColorIconsNum sheet.