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Use the Excel Export API to Use a Formula to Determine what Cells to Format

  • 3 minutes to read

The following example demonstrates how to use a formula as a formatting criterion.

  1. Create a new XlConditionalFormatting XlConditionalFormatting instance that contains formatting rules and settings.
  2. Specify the cell range to which the formatting is going to be applied. To do that, add the target range to the ranges collection, accessible through the XlConditionalFormatting.Ranges property.
  3. Create a new XlCondFmtRuleExpression object with the passed string formula that will be used as a rule criterion.
  4. Specify the formatting parameters to cells conforming to the condition.

  5. Add the newly created rule to the corresponding collection contained in the XlConditionalFormatting object by calling the Add method.
  6. To activate the created conditional formatting rule, add the object created in step 1 to the worksheet collection of conditional formatting rules. The collection can be accessed through the IXlSheet.ConditionalFormattings property.

View Example

// Create an instance of the XlConditionalFormatting class.
XlConditionalFormatting formatting = new XlConditionalFormatting();

// Specify the cell range
// to which the conditional formatting rules should be applied (A2:C7).
formatting.Ranges.Add(XlCellRange.FromLTRB(0, 1, 2, 6));

// Create the rule that uses a formula to highlight cells
// if a value in the column "C" is greater than 0 and less than 50. 
XlCondFmtRuleExpression rule = new XlCondFmtRuleExpression("AND($C2>0,$C2<50)");

// Specify formatting settings to be applied to cells
// if the condition is true.
rule.Formatting = XlFill.SolidFill(Color.FromArgb(0xff, 0xff, 0xcc));
formatting.Rules.Add(rule);

// Create the rule that uses a formula to highlight cells
// if a value in the column "C" is less than or equal to 0. 
rule = new XlCondFmtRuleExpression("$C2<=0");

// Specify formatting settings to be applied to cells
// if the condition is true.
rule.Formatting = XlCellFormatting.Bad;
formatting.Rules.Add(rule);

// Add the specified format options
// to the worksheet collection of conditional formats.
sheet.ConditionalFormattings.Add(formatting);

The following image demonstrates the result.

XLExport_Examples - ConditionalFormatting_Expression