Icons in a cell help to visualize the positive or negative values
Example: Balance of the stock
In this example, you have the amount of the stock of your products. But, the gap between the two months isn't obvious (which one is positive, neutral, or negative 🤔)
How do add icons in the cells according to the value?
To enhance the visualization of the trends, we can easily add an icon to the cell with the conditional formatting
- Select your range of cells (D3:D10 in our example).
- Select the menu Conditional Formatting > Icon Sets.
- Select one of the icon sets (here 3 directional icons)
Immediately, icons are displayed in your cells according to the values in the data range.
Customize the settings to display icon
By default, the distribution of icons is done by third (for 3 icons) or by quarter (for 4 icons).
That means each icon represents a third of the data 😮🤨
You can change the default rule and apply your own rules like this.
- Open the menu Manage Rules from the ribbon (Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules)
- Then, you select the rule you want to customize but WATCH OUT! It's really important to select the option This Workbook.
- Then, you click on Edit Rule ...
- The following dialog box shows you the standard icon rules (33% for each icon).
- Finally, you can set your own rule like this one
- greater than 50, a green icon
- between -50 an d 49, a yellow icon
- In other situations, the red icon
The new display in your worksheet
And once you apply your new rule, you can see that some icons have changed.
