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How to grey out cells based on another column or drop down list choice in Excel?

Author: Sun Last Modified: 2024-09-04

Have you ever tried to grey out cells based on another column value or the drop down list choice? Here in this I will give you the solution about above problem in Excel.
grey out cells based on another column

Grey out cells based on another column or drop down list choice

arrow blue right bubble Grey out cells based on another column or drop down list choice

For example, here are two columns –column A and column B, and if the values in column B are YES, then the corresponding cells in column A will be greyed out, if not, the cells in column A do nothing.

1. Select the cells in column A you want to grey out, click Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule.
click Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule

2. In the New Formatting Rule dialog, select Use a formula to determine which cells to format, and enter this formula =B2="YES" into the Formula values where this formula is true. Click Format to go to Format Cells dialog, select the grey color under Fill tab. See screenshot:
specify options in the New Formatting Rule dialog

3. Click OK > OK to close the dialogs. And the cells have been greyed out based on another column values.
the cells have been greyed out based on another column values

Note: if you want to grey out cells based on the drop down list choice, you also can do as follows:

Select column B, and then create the drop down list by clicking Data > Data Validation, selecting List from Allow list, and selecting the source data into textbox. See screenshot:
create a drop down list in the Data Validation dialog

Then the drop down list has been created in column B
the drop down list has been created

Repeat above step 1-3 to apply a formula into the Conditional Formatting feature, and then the cell in column A will be greyed out based on the choice in column B.
repeat the steps to get the result

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