What Can I Do with Conditional Formatting?

With conditional formatting, you apply rules to your data to highlight when something important happens. For example, you might use stoplight colors to show when revenues meet high, medium, and low thresholds.
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You can make conditional formatting rules available at workbook level or visualization level.

Conditional formatting provides a way for business users to see events or changes in their data. For example, if users want to see when revenues meet high, medium, or low thresholds, you can create a conditional formatting rule that colors the revenue data points as green, orange, or red.

As a content author you can:

  • Apply multiple rules at the same time.
  • Apply multiple rules to a measure at the same time.
  • Change the order in which rules are applied.
  • Turn rules on and off.
  • Emphasize data in Table, Pivot, and Tile visualizations with emojis and icons.

Conditional formatting compares measures, such as revenue for a year, the number of units of a product, the number of students that didn't return to school during an academic year, with one of the following:

  • A set of thresholds.

    For example, highlight values in red if my blood pressure is above 90 or under 70.

  • A target or goal.

    For example, highlight values in red if my costs exceed my budget.

  • A percentage of a target.

    For example, highlight values in green when I reach 80% of my sales goal.

  • A complex expression.

    For example, highlight values in green when I achieve 5% growth in sales compared to the same period last year.

Note: You can't apply conditional formatting to sub-totals or grand totals in a pivot table.

You can:

  • Format the fill color and color density.
  • Format the font, font size, font color, and font style.
  • Display emojis and icons (in Table, Pivot, or Tile visualizations).

You can also:

  • Apply conditional formatting to maps.
  • Add labels, tooltips, and legends. For example, when you hover over a data point, display a label "This LOB is above target" to identify the rule applied.

  • Annotate Table, Pivot, or Tile visualizations with icons and emojis. For example, you can use an emoji to highlight when revenue exceeds 1,000,000.

    See Conditional Decorations and Icons in Oracle Analytics Cloud.

  • Combine the formatting of values that match more than one rule, using the Enable rule blending option). For example, if rule 1 is revenue greater than one million and highlights in green with the italic Calibri font, and rule 2 is revenue less than target and highlights in red with the Monospace font, then a revenue greater than one million but less than target will have the italic Calibri font with the background highlighted in red.

    If you're applying multiple rules to a measure, the last rule that evaluates to true is the one that colors the item. For example, if rule 1 is revenue greater than one million and highlights in green, and rule 2 is revenue less than target and highlights in red, an item where revenue meets both criteria will highlight in red.