Deleting Conditional Formatting

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 26, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016


7

Conditional formats, to Excel, are just like any other format. That means that you can delete them by simply deleting all the formatting in a cell. Follow these steps:

  1. Select the cell or cells whose formatting you want to delete.
  2. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
  3. In the Editing group, click Clear | Clear Formats.

That's it. All the formatting is removed from the cells, including any conditional formatting. If you don't want to delete any explicit formatting in the cell, but instead want to delete just the conditional formats, follow these steps:

  1. Select the cells from which you want to delete the conditional formatting.
  2. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
  3. In the Styles section, click Conditional Formatting. Excel displays various options related to conditional formatting.
  4. Choose Clear Rules | Clear Rules from Selected Cells.

If you don't want to delete all the conditional formatting rules, then you need to follow these steps, instead:

  1. Select the cells from which you want to delete the conditional formatting.
  2. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
  3. In the Styles section, click Conditional Formatting. Excel displays various options related to conditional formatting.
  4. Click Manage Rules. Excel displays the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager. (See Figure 1.)
  5. Figure 1. The Conditional Formatting Rules Manger.

  6. From the list of available rules, select the one you want to delete.
  7. Click Delete Rule.
  8. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for any other rules you want to delete from the selected cells.
  9. Click OK to close the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6815) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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Comments

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What is two more than 0?

2018-09-17 00:25:31

Arfa Badar

Thank you sir It is helpful and easy to understand


2013-08-25 10:51:33

Peter Moran

If you google "Change conditional formatting to standard/normal formatting" you will get a number of pointers to help perform this change.

However it appears the CF in Excel 2007 is not amenable to this as Excel 07 seems to extend the formatting over the specified range at calculation time and does not keep individual details for each cell, which I think does happen in pre ribbon Excel, and possibly in Excel 2010.


2013-08-21 18:29:07

Mike

Paste Special doesn't work either, as it does just what it says, and only pastes the same formatting that was copied. I need an ability to be able to convert conditional to permanent formatting.


2013-08-20 06:27:08

MDC

Mike:
Have you tried "Paste Special"?
There's a format option listed. I haven't tested it on conditional formatting, but it's worth tinkering with.

Cheers!


2013-08-19 06:12:18

Mike

Jennifer, that's what I do at the moment, but it is a longwinded process.


2013-08-12 09:09:51

Jennifer Thomas

My thought was to select all the conditionally formatted cells and then apply that same formatting manually before you delete the trigger column.

But while you can use Go to Special to find conditionally formatted cells, I don't see a way to select them all.

If anyone know how to do that, it would be a cool solution ... here's hoping!


2013-08-11 07:40:27

Mike

Can I delete the conditional formatting but keep (or convert to) the effect of that conditional formatting as fixed formatting?

What I mean is, if I delete some cells that the conditional formatting refers to, then the conditional formatting doesn't work properly.

e.g. [if B1=0, colour D1 green] is the conditional format. If I want to delete column B, then I've lost my conditional formatting. I'd like to "fix" cell D1 as green when B1=0, so that I can then delete column B.

How can I do it?


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