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How to apply conditional formatting search for multiple words in Excel?

Author Xiaoyang Last modified

It may be easy for us to highlight rows based on a specific value, this article, I will talk about how to highlight cells in column A depending if they are found in the column D, which means, if the cell content contains any text in a specific list, then highlight as left screenshot shown.

a screenshot shows that cells are highlighted if words existing in another column

Conditional formatting to highlight the cells contains one of several values

Filter cells contain specific values and highlight them at once


Conditional formatting to highlight the cells contains one of several values

In fact, the Conditional Formatting can help you to solve this job, please do with the following steps:

1. First, please create a range name for the specific words list, select the cell text and enter a range name Mylist (you can rename as you need) into the Name box, and press Enter key, see screenshot:

a screenshot of naming the specific words list

2. Then select the cells that you want to highlight, and click Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule, in the New Formatting Rule dialog box, finish the below operations:

(1.) Click Use a formula to determine which cells to format under the Select a Rule Type list box;

(2.) Then enter this formula: =SUM(COUNTIF(A2,"*"&Mylist&"*")) (A2 is the first cell of the range you want to highlight, Mylist is the range name you have created in step 1) into the Format values where this formula is true text box;

(3.) And then click Format button.

a screenshot of creating a new conditional formatting rule and the setting the rule

3. Go to the Format Cells dialog box, and choose one color to highlight the cells under the Fill tab, see screenshot:

a screenshot of selecting a fill color

4. And then click OK > OK to close the dialogs, all the cells which contain any one of the specific list cell values are highlighted at once, see screenshot:

a screenshot showing the highlighted cells if they have words existing in the named range


Filter cells contains specific values and highlight them at once

If you have Kutools for Excel, with its Super Filter utility, you can quickly filter the cells which contains specified text values, and then highlight them at once.

After downloading and installing Kutools for Excel, please do as follows:

1. Click Kutools Plus > Super Filter, see screenshot:

a screenshot of enabling the Super Filter feature of Kutools

2. In the Super Filter pane, please do the following operations:

  • (1.) Check Specified option, and then click a screenshot of the selection icon button to select the data range that you want to filter;
  • (2.) Choose the relationship among the filter criteria as you need;
  • (3.) Then set the criteria in the criteria list box.

a screenshot of setting the filter rule

3. After setting the criteria, click Filter to filter the cells contains the specific values as you need. And then choose one fill color for the seleted cells under Home tab, see screenshot:

a screenshot of selecting a fill color for the filtering cells

4. And all the cells contains the specific values are highlighted, now, you can cancel the filter by clicking Clear button, see screenshot:

a screenshot of clearing the filter

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