How to highlight cells that contain question mark in Excel?
When working with large datasets in Excel, you might encounter cells that contain a question mark (?). This often indicates missing, incomplete, or suspicious data that needs further review. Highlighting these cells automatically can help you identify and resolve issues quickly and efficiently. In this guide, you’ll learn how to use some quick ways to highlight any cell that contains a question mark.
Highlight cells that contain question mark with Conditional Formatting
Excel’s built-in Conditional Formatting feature allows you to apply custom formatting to cells that meet specific conditions — without changing the data itself. It’s a powerful tool for visually identifying key patterns or issues. In this case, we’ll use it to detect and highlight cells that contain a question mark.
1. Select the cells in which you want to highlight the cells that contain question marks.
2. Click Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Text that Contains..., see screenshot:
<
3. In the Text That Contains dialog, type ~? into the textbox, then click the arrow down to choose one format you want to use for the cells containing question marks. 
If you choose Custom Format, you can customize the format as you need in the Format Cells dialog.
4. Click OK. Then the cells that contain question marks have been highlighted.
Highlight cells that contain question mark with Kutools AI
Kutools AI offers a smarter, quicker way to highlight cells with specific characters. It uses intelligent automation to detect patterns and apply formatting.
After installing Kutools for Excel, please do as this:
1. Click Kutools AI > AI Aide to open the Kutools AI Aide pane.
2. Select the data list that you want to highlight the cells with question marks. In the pane, type the following requirment into the chatbox, and press Send button.
Highlight cells that contain question mark with light red color in the selected range 
3. Kutools AI will analyze the question, after finishing, please click Execute button to get the result.
📘 Conclusion
Both Excel's Conditional Formatting and Kutools AI offer effective ways to highlight cells with question marks.
- For quick, built-in solutions, use Conditional Formatting.
- For advanced, AI-powered detection, Kutools AI provides smarter and faster processing.
Choose the method that fits your workflow, and start making your data more readable and actionable today! If you're interested in exploring more Excel tips and tricks, our website offers thousands of tutorials to help you master Excel.
Other Operations (Articles)
Display Specific Symbol Based On Cell Value in Excel
How to display specific symbols based on cell value?
How To Conditional Formatting Cells That Contain Symbol in Excel?
Conditional Formatting feature is used to highlight cells that contain specified characters, but for highlighting cells containing any symbol such as question mark (?), or exclamation point (!) as the below screenshot shows, the built-in feature cannot directly solve the problem.
Excel: How To Create Or Insert A Bookmark
Have you ever imagined creating or inserting a bookmark for quickly jumping to a specific data range while there is a lot of data in a worksheet or a workbook?
How to apply shading to odd or even (alternative) rows/columns in Excel?
While designing a worksheet, many people tend to apply shading to odd or even (alternative) rows or columns in order to make the worksheet more visual. This article will show you two methods to apply shading to odd or even rows/columns in Excel.
Best Office Productivity Tools
Supercharge Your Excel Skills with Kutools for Excel, and Experience Efficiency Like Never Before. Kutools for Excel Offers Over 300 Advanced Features to Boost Productivity and Save Time. Click Here to Get The Feature You Need The Most...
Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier
- Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
- Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
- Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
All Kutools add-ins. One installer
Kutools for Office suite bundles add-ins for Excel, Word, Outlook & PowerPoint plus Office Tab Pro, which is ideal for teams working across Office apps.
- All-in-one suite — Excel, Word, Outlook & PowerPoint add-ins + Office Tab Pro
- One installer, one license — set up in minutes (MSI-ready)
- Works better together — streamlined productivity across Office apps
- 30-day full-featured trial — no registration, no credit card
- Best value — save vs buying individual add-in