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Adding & Managing Conditional Formatting Rules
Adding & Managing Conditional Formatting Rules

How to add Conditional Formatting Rules to improve data visualization

Updated over a week ago

Just like in Excel, the Conditional Formatting feature in Toolio allows you to change the appearance of cells based on specific conditions.
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Overview

Imagine you are building a report and want to better visualize the sales percentage differences between Divisions or Departments. Adding a Conditional Formatting Rule can help emphasize these discrepancies in your reporting.

See below for a step by step walkthrough:

You can add a Conditional Formatting Rule by clicking on the View and selecting Conditional Formatting, and then hitting "Add rule."

You'll be prompted to select one of the 4 types of filters you want to apply the rule to: Type, Metric, Variant, and Attribute.

Depending on what you're adding a rule for, you will then be met with different drop downs. For example, if you select Type, you'll have 4 types of filters to select from: text, currency, percentage, and number. Please make sure to select the correct rule type for your specific use case. Please also note that in the instance where multiple rules are overlapping, the latest rule will be displayed.

Upon selecting a rule type, you will have the choice of single color or color scale formatting.

In this example, we are opting to use color scale formatting to highlight Division level percent differences in Gross Sales Retail. Please note that because the rule type is set to 'Percentage' in this case, the number and currency values are not affected.

Additionally, users can easily save custom color choices and have these colors available for future use. Select the β€œ+” located above the color selection grid to create or add custom color options.

Toolio is also configured to support Bold, Italicize, Strike-Through, and Underline text to better highlight your data outputs.

In certain cases, you will have multiple conditional formatting rules that could impact the same metrics/variants. In this case, you can drag and drop your rules in the order you need. The last rule will take precedence.

If I change the order of the rule the formatting will change.

Copying From Another View

If you want to re-use conditional formats you have created in another view, you can just copy it into your current view.

Finally, make sure to save frequently used Conditional Formatting rules to a specific View by selecting View Options and clicking "Save."

Formatting the Separators / Dividers

For your reports, you may want to add separators (also known as dividers) for better readability among your report's sections. In order to increase readability, you can also format these separators in any color, any font style. To do so, navigate to Add Rule under Conditional Formatting, then from the drop down select "Separators". Your created separators will be listed under the dropdown for you to apply the conditional formatting. Once you select the formatting you like, and hit "UPDATE", your changes will applied and your separator line will be formatted.

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