Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 4, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365
Parton wonders if there is a way to convert conditional formatting into absolute formatting. He would like to be able to 'fix' the formatting in a worksheet in a way similar to how Paste Values can be used to 'fix' the values of cells.
There is no way to do this in Excel. (It would be especially great if you could do it using a Paste Special option, as Parton notes.) You can, however, use some macros to do the trick. The macros are not trivial, however, as VBA doesn't give you a whole lot of help in dealing with conditional formatting. For a good idea of what is involved, you may want to refer to this page on Chip Pearson's website:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CFColors.htm
There is another thing you can try, as well, that involves saving your workbook in a different format. Try these general steps:
In the process of saving the Excel workbook in HTML format, the program "strips" all the conditional formatting and makes it explicit (absolute). You should be aware, however, that this process also does the same with your formulas, saving everything as a value, instead. Even so, this may work for your needs if the tradeoff is acceptable.
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2024-07-26 12:10:21
J. Woolley
My Excel Toolbox includes the CFConvert macro to convert the active sheet's conditional formatting into static formats. It uses the Web Archive (.mht) method described in Mike J's comment below.
See https://sites.google.com/view/MyExcelToolbox/
2023-07-11 08:28:02
Mike J
The tip mentions that saving to html has the disadvantage of also converting formulas to values.
However if you clear the conditional formatting from the original file, then copy the range (or whole sheet, if necessary) from the .html file and paste back just the formatting over the original .xlsx range, the formulas can be retained.
Incidentally, saving to a .mht (single file web page) works too, and eliminates the creation of a redundant directory.
Still not as slick as the ASAP Utilities route, but it could possibly be made into a vba sub(), even cleaning up after itself.
2023-07-10 17:28:05
OMG, you just saved me a massive amount of work. Great solution. Thank you!
2021-03-10 11:10:09
Patrick
This was amazingly easy! Thank you so much, you saved me tons of time and what little hair I have left with this solution.
2020-07-02 05:33:32
Yazan
The way I do it is a bit simpler .
I copy the range and paste it into powerpoint maintaining source formatting. Then I copy the range again from powerpoint to Excel.
This works just fine with minor drawbacks; sometimes font size will change.
It's a workaround, but ti works :)
2020-01-24 04:31:19
Gerhard Seljehammer
Hi,
ASAP Utilities, which I highly recommend, has solved that (and many other challenges in Excel) with: "Range » Replace conditional formatting with static formatting in selection".
2020-01-06 17:20:49
Tomek
To carry the second solution a step further, I think it would be possible to do the HTML trick creating a new version of the original file (with a new name), then copy and paste special - formulas from the original worksheet to the new one. You could also paste special - column widths and/or formulas and number formats, and possibly comments. It is a bit of extra work, but would overcome the trade-off mentioned in the tip.
If you need to do this often you could record a macro that does all the work, then modify it to use with different file names (if you are proficient with macros).
2020-01-05 02:33:30
Peter McNab
I do this on a regular basis when extracting sheets from a spreadsheet containing conditional formatting. In my case, I am only interested in the font colour and background colour. Once the extracted sheets are manipulated and the primary workbook is closed, the conditions no longer apply. So before that I run a macro that checks each cell, similar to the following, using the DisplayFormat property. This does take a little while even for a small spreadsheet (my real case does other stuff in the loop), but it may be quicker than the html procedure.
' determine a range of interest
Set rSelect = Range("a1")
Set rSelect = Range(rSelect, rSelect.SpecialCells(xlLastCell))
' check all cells in range
For Each cc In rSelect
With cc
If .FormatConditions.Count > 0 Then
' use conditionally formatted foreground and background colour
.Interior.Color = .DisplayFormat.Interior.Color
.Font.Color = .DisplayFormat.Font.Color
End If
End With
Next cc
2020-01-04 22:15:26
Max Zimmerman
Would it not be simpler to select the page/copy open a new tab and paste formulas? Delete the old tab if no longer needed.
2020-01-04 12:06:44
Jim
For those who might be looking for a "i don't need to know how it works, just need to get it done" solution - ASAP Utilities <https://www.asap-utilities.com/> has a tool that will do this.
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