What is Conditional Formatting?

Conditional formatting is a feature in spreadsheet software (like Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and Apache OpenOffice Calc) that allows you to automatically apply formatting (such as colors, icons, and data bars) to cells based on their values or based on formulas. It's commonly used to highlight trends, identify outliers, and quickly visualize data patterns. For example, you could use conditional formatting to highlight cells containing values above a certain threshold or to color-code cells based on their relative magnitude.