Ok, here's my problem. I have a column that will contain due dates. I want to conditionally format them to turn red when the date in the cell is less than today's date. In other words, past due. The sheet will continue in perpetuity with additions and deletes so I need the formatting to apply to the whole column except the first cell which is the header. I can do the conditional formatting for a single cell but I'm looking for a way to apply it to each individual cell in the entire column based on its own contents. I'm assuming there must be some variable reference or something but I'm stumped and my Google-fu is lacking today.

Any ideas?

Take a look at this:

https://support.office.com/en-...en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Is the data in just a raw sheet, or in a table?
If a table, you should be able to select the column (table, not sheet), then conditional formatting, highlight sell rules, less than. Then use TODAY() as the condition.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Is the data in just a raw sheet, or in a table?
If a table, you should be able to select the column, then conditional formatting, highlight sell rules, less than. Then use TODAY() as the condition.

Yep, that will do it. But use =Today() for the reference

My MSFT linked reference will set up a rule you can then "format paint" to any other cell

I used Sailor1911's link and it appears to have worked. I only entered dates in the first few fields as a test but they highlighted individually as they were supposed to. Since I didn't want to format the first cell, the header, I did have to look up the shortcut for starting with a cell and selecting to the bottom. Ctrl+Shift+Down. That selected the rest of the column and then for the formula under Conditional Formatting, I entered =L2<TODAY(). I wasn't sure originally if the reference to L2 would always refer to the contents of L2 or if it would propagate to each cell below. Apparently, it was the latter.

Thanks for the quick responses!