Excel Conditional Formatting with the TODAY function | Duplicate Rule

Posted on: 05/16/2022

The TODAY function is one of my favorite Date & Time functions in Excel. It returns the current date and will automatically update. We will use the TODAY function with Conditional Formatting and create three rules on a date field.

**Excel Conditional Formatting with the Today Function**

The date field can be any date field - order date, invoice date, request date, etc. I used the ship date in my example. If the cell's date equals the current date, we will put that one color, any dates less than today's date in another color, and dates greater than today in a third color.

Conditional formatting is located on the Home tab. After writing the first rule, =$G2=TODAY(), I copied the rules to create the other two rules. Here is a screenshot of all three rules.

Recent Microsoft Word articles

YouTube Video - Conditional Formatting with the TODAY Function

Chapters/Bookmarks

0:00 Intro
0:26 Ship date
0:44 Rule 1 - $G2=TODAY()
1:47 Mixed Reference
3:57 Rule 2 - Duplicate rule
4:47 Rule 3
5:20 Resize Conditional Formatting

Recent Teams articles

TODAY Function

=TODAY() The TODAY function has no arguments and will return the current date. When the file is open again, the date will automatically update.It is a great Date & Time Function.

Conditional Formatting Rules

Three rules:

Greater Than
Less Than
Equal To

Conditional Formatting Rules — **Three conditional formatting rules**

Recent Excel Articles

Excel - Advanced Filters

Excel filters are great for seeing just a subset of your data. You can use filters for text, numbers, and dates, but also by color. You can use font color or fill color (the paint can). You can also use Advanced Filters. You Advanced Filters when you are looking at multiple fields but for different criteria. For example, I want to filter and only see people in Georgia and New York. That is easy to do and can be done with the drop-down filter. But, for Georgia, I want to see people who are Single, and for New York, I want to see Family. That requires an Advanced Filter.

Excel 3D Reference - easily reference data on another worksheet

A 3D reference in Excel is a simple method to pull data from another cell, another worksheet, or a range of worksheets. Changes in the source will reflect in the destination.

What is the Middle Class and Are You in the Middle Class?

What is the middle class and are you in the middle class? To figure out if you are in the middle class, we need to know the median household income, how many people are in your household, and where you live.

Excel - 3 Cool methods to extract text from the beginning of a text string

We frequently need to extract part of a text string in Microsoft Excel. We are going to extract the first part of a text string. Examples of text string parts you would extract include product numbers, employee IDs, and accounting numbers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Microsoft 365

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is in all Microsoft 365 apps - Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, and other M365 apps. In Excel, we have Analyze data on the Home tab and the ability to get data from a picture or screenshot.

Analyze Data Command in Excel - Ask questions about your data using AI

Need to quickly understand your data in Excel and ask questions about your data? Easy to do using Excel's Analyze Data command located on the Home tab in Excel. Analyze Data using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Chris Menard

Chris Menard is a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and is employed full-time as a Trainer for BakerHostetler, one of the nation’s largest law firms. Menard has a YouTube channel with over 900 technology videos covering Excel, Word, Zoom, Teams, Outlook, Gmail, Google Calendar, and other resources that over 16 million viewers have appreciated. Menard also does public speaking at conferences for CPAs and Administrative Professionals. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn at chrismenardtraining.com/linked or on YouTube at chrismenardtraining.com/youtube