Fix Excel Conditional Formatting Duplicate Rules

Conditional formatting is a great way to highlight specific data, but did you know that it can automatically create new rules on its own? I’ll show you how that happens, and an easy way to fix those conditional formatting duplicated rules.

Video: Conditional Formatting Duplicated Rules

Watch this video to see how the duplicated rules are created, and an easy way to fix the problem. There are separate written instructions beneath the video transcript found below.

TRANSCRIPT FOR THE VIDEO

Conditional Formatting

In this workbook, I’ve got a couple conditional formatting rules, and I’m going to show you how those can get duplicated, so you end up with lots more rules than you started out with, and then how you can fix the problem.

So in this table I have two rules. 

–One puts a line at the top of a date, if it’s different from the date above.

–The other rule changes the price to green, if it’s greater than $500 dollars.

We’ll take a look at those rules. In the Home tab, go to Conditional Formatting, Manage Rules.

And there you can see the two rules. They’re each applied from row 3 to 19 in this table.

–Now this one is just a cell value greater than 500. 

–And this one is referring to a couple of cells. So if A2 is different from A3, we’re going to put a blue line, at the top of the cell.

How Problems Happen

And now, I’m going to insert a row, because I forgot to put in one of the records here. So I’ll click, Insert. And then just put some data in this row.

So that was a simple change to the table. And now I’m going to go back and look at my conditional formatting rules again. And suddenly I have a new rule, just for the row that I inserted. 

So row 11 has its own rule, and the previous rule is still there, going from A3 to E10, and then A12 to E20. So it’s skipping this row, because that row has a separate rule.

And if you insert lots of rows, you can end up with hundreds of these rules set up, without even knowing it.

The Solution

And what I do to fix it is select all the rows, except for the first one. Then go to Conditional Formatting, Clear Rules, From Selected Cells.

Now if I go back in, and Manage Rules…I’ll go back to This Worksheet, just so we can see everything. So we’re back to those two original rules.

Then, I select the first row. I’ll select the first row in the table, this time, instead of the whole worksheet.

And go to the Format Painter, and make sure you’re selecting this first row as well, and apply that formatting to all the rows again.

And when we go back to Manage Rules, we still just have those two original rules.

If you need to do this frequently, go to my website to get a macro that removes the duplicate rules. It’s designed for data in in an Excel named table.

End Of Transcript

Simple Conditional Formatting Rules

In this example, there is a small table, with 2 simple conditional formatting rules:

• In column E, highlight prices that are greater than 500
• In columns A:E, add a blue top border if the date in column A is different from the date above

New Rule Automatically Created

To see how a new rule is automatically created, delete row 10 in this table. Then, go to Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules, to see the results.

• The original rule has changed, and excludes the deleted row.
• There is a new rule that applies to row 10 only, and it has a #REF! error

Why It Happened

The new rule was created because the Top Border rule has a formula that refers to another row. It compares the date in the current row, to the date in the row above:

=$A2<>$A3

When you delete a row, the row below that loses its reference to that row. If we had the same formula on the worksheet, you’d see a #REF! error.

The same #REF! error occurs in the conditional formatting formula, so Excel creates a new rule for that formula.

Fix Conditional Formatting Duplicate Rules

If you frequently delete and insert rows, you could end up with many duplicated rules. In a big workbook, that could potentially slow down your workbook’s calculation speed.

And, you might not even know about those extra rules, unless you go into the Manage Rules dialog box for some reason.

I’ve written about this problem before, and there are a few ways to prevent the problem from occurring. Now that I’ve found an easy way to fix the problem, I don’t worry about prevention – I just clean things up when necessary.

Easy Steps to Fix the Problem

Here are the easy steps to remove the conditional formatting duplicate rules:

• Except for the first row, select all the rows with the same conditional formatting rules
• On the Excel Ribbon’s Home tab, click Conditional Formatting
• Click Clear Rules, then click Clear Rules from Selected Cells
• Select the first row, and on the Excel Ribbon’s Home tab, click the Format Painter
• Drag the Format Painter over all the cells where the conditional formatting rules should be applied, including the first row

To confirm that the duplicate rules were removed, go back to the Manage Rules window. Only the two original rules should be listed.

Get the Sample File and Macro

To get the sample file that I used in this example, go to the Conditional Formatting page on my Contextures website. The details are there, as well as the macro code. Scroll down a bit to see the link to download the file – it is in xlsx format, so the macro isn’t in that file.

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