A Conditional Formatting formula rule expected to apply to all cells is only affecting some

A very recently asked Q on Web Applications has no answer yet (and, in my opinion, is so badly written may not receive an answer at all promptly). However it does seem (in my interpretation) to raise a very common issue with Conditional Formatting [CF] – with a very simple solution. The asker chose an Applies to range of C2:X2, a formula condition of:

=ISBLANK(B2) 

and formatting of White font with Black fill, then complained that since:

B2 is never empty

(other than at the bottom of the sheet) the resultant "fill" did:

not apply properly to all cells

An "image of the issue" shows (amongst a lot else) for Rows 2 and 3 a mix of populated and empty cells, some of each of which are formatted. Below the populated cells in the part of the range that is visible are represented by their column letter and the formatted cells with f:

| C | D | | f | Gf | H | I | J | | f | f | f | f | f | Qf | R | |

The pattern is that only cells immediately to the right of a blank cell appear conditionally formatted, regardless of whether or not themselves populated (and, apart from for C2, whether or not B2 is).

With an edit:

=IF(ISBLANK(B2), true, true) it works as expected

the intent can be deduced to be that all of C2:X2 should be conditionally formatted when B2 is not blank.

(i) Is Google Sheets Conditional Formatting applying improperly and (ii) what is required to achieve the objective?

posted about 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

4y ago by Alexei‭

pnuts‭

407 reputation 21 14 8 46