How to select formatted cells in Excel?

Microsoft Excel’s Find and Replace feature supports to search for cells with special formatting. Therefore, we can select cells with similar formatting by this feature easily in Excel.

1. Select the range that you will select cells with similar formatting, and press the Ctrl + F keys at the same time to open the Find and Replace dialog box.

2. In the opening Find and Replace dialog box, click the Options button to expand the dialog box, and then click the Format button.

3. In the Find Format dialog box, select the specified formatting you will search cells with, and click the OK button.

In our example, we check the green background color on the Fill tab. See below screen shot:

4. Now you return to the Find and Replace dialog box. Please click the Find All button.

Then you will see all cells in the selected range with the specified formatting are listing at the bottom of Find and Replace dialog box.

5. Select all search results in the Find and Replace dialog box by pressing the Ctrl + A keys simultaneously, and you will see all found cells are selected in the range. See screen shot above.

If you have Kutools for Excel installed, its Select Cells with Format utility will also help you to select cells with similar formatting in Excel easily.

1. Select the Range that you will select cells with similar formatting, and click the Kutools > Select > Select Cells with Format.

2. In the opening Select Cells with Format dialog box, you need to:

(1) Click the Choose Format From Cell button to open another Select Cells with Format dialog box, select a cell which contains the specified formatting you will search for, and click the OK button.

(2) Uncheck the Type option;

(3) Only check the specified formatting that you will search for. In our case, we check the Background Color option.

3. Click the Ok button.

Then it will pop up a dialog box to tell you how many cells will be selected. Just click the Yes button.

Then all cells with specified formatting are selected in the selected range at once.

If you need to select all formatted cells except the plain cells in a range, you can get it done by Kutools for Excel’s Select Cells with Format utility and Select Range Helper utility. Please do as follows:

1. Select the Range that you will select all formatted cells, and click the Kutools > Select > Select Cells with Format.

2. In the opening Select Cells with Format dialog box, you need to:

(1) Click Choose Format From Cell button, and select a cell without any formatting.

(2) In the format type box, uncheck Number option and Alignment option, and then check all Font options, Fill options, and Protection options. See screen shot.

3. Click the Ok button. Then it will pop up a dialog box to tell you how many cells will be selected. Just click the Yes button.

Now all cells without formatting are selected in the specified range.

4. Click the Kutools > Select > Select Range Helper.

5. In the opening Select Range Helper dialog box, check the Inverse Selection option, and then select the original range that you selected in the first step.

Then you will see all cells with special formatting are selected in the specified range at once. See below screen shot:

6. Close the Select Range Helper dialog box.