Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Conditionally Highlighting Cells Containing Formulas.
You probably already know that you can select all the cells containing formulas in a worksheet by pressing F5 and choosing Special | Formulas. If you need to keep a constant eye on where formulas are located, then repeatedly doing the selecting can get tedious. A better solution is to use the conditional formatting capabilities of Excel to highlight cells with formulas.
Before you can use conditional formatting, however, you need to create a user-defined function that will return True or False, depending on whether there is a formula in a cell. The following macro will do the task very nicely:
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: 
Function HasFormula(rCell As Range) As Boolean
Application.Volatile
HasFormula = rCell.HasFormula
End Function
To use this with conditional formatting, select the cells you want checked, and then follow these steps:
Figure 1. The New Formatting Rule dialog box.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9900) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Conditionally Highlighting Cells Containing Formulas.
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2016-06-21 07:39:04
Willy Vanhaelen
If you have an Excel version prior to 2013 you can do it without a user defined function as well.
See: http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/tip/identify_formulas_by_using_conditional_formatting/
2016-06-21 02:25:52
Peter Watson
apparently "isformula" is new in Excel 2013
2016-06-21 02:23:44
Peter Watson
think there's an easier way - one that does not use a macro - you can use the excel formula-function "isformula".
refer http://www.contextures.com/excelisformulafunction.html
for how
worked for me
2016-01-29 09:51:32
Marti Jordan
I think I was confused because of the title. This doesn't mean it will conditionally format any cell with any formula. I believe this will identify only the cells with a specific formula. Am I correct?
I'd like to conditionally format a sheet in my workbook to highlight any cell that contains any formula.
2016-01-29 09:27:38
Marti Jordan
I've tried it multiple times to multiple cells, single cells... nothing is highlighted.
2015-03-18 12:23:01
Matt W
Using Application.Volatile here means all this conditional formatting will be recalculated whenever any cell on the sheet changes.
This can cause slowness, and I even managed to cause some sort of bizarre interactions with editing the text on form controls.
I suggest using this function minus the Application.Volatile line, it seems to work just as well without it (in Excel 2013).
2015-02-07 11:36:11
Willy Vanhaelen
You can do it without a user defined funtion. See: http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/usertips/tip045.htm
2015-02-06 18:21:43
Gave it a red hot try but does not seem to work for Excel 365
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