Conditional formatting allows you to emphasize cells that meets a rule. So here we have an example. We have a scenario picker, and that looks for the linked cell number 1 out of our list, i.e. looks for the best case. So what we want is when the best case is being selected, we want it to be highlighted in green. We want want it to be emphasized so the user really knows which one is being used. So what we've done is we've hidden a number 1 in cell C8, C8. We then open up the Edit Formatting tool. Now for that, you go to Alt H L R, that's Alt H L R, and you create a new rule. Within there, you then click Use a formula to determine which cells to format. And what we're going to say is, if the value in C8, which is a 1, equals the value in D5, which is a 1, then we want to highlight the three cells, B8, C8, and D8. But we also want to change it so that if C9 equals D5, so if a 2 has been selected in the scenario picker, then we want the base case line, the second line down, to be highlighted in green and exactly the same for the worst case. So you create your rule in the top line, B8, C8, D8, and then you copy the formatting down afterwards. In order for the copying of formatting down to work, you have to write your rule very particularly. Inside this editing formatting rule box here, you might see the rule is =$C8=$D$5.

It's basically if the cell C8 equals the cell D5, give us some green. But we want to be able to copy this down, so we take away the $ that would've been before the 8. So originally when you write this rule it says $C$8, it locks onto only C8. By taking away the $ before the 8, that means we can then copy that rule down. The $C stays the same, but the 8 will change to a 9. So we can apply the rule to C8 and C9 and C10 and any others down that we want to.