Excel Top/Bottom Rules

Top/Bottom Rules

Top/Bottom Rules are premade types of conditional formatting in Excel used to change the appearance of cells in a range based on your specified conditions.

Here is the Top/Bottom Rules part of the conditional formatting menu:

Appearance Options

The web browser version of Excel offers the following appearance options for conditionally formatted cells:

• Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text
• Yellow Fill with Dark Yellow Text
• Green Fill with Dark Green Text
• Light Red Fill
• Red Text
• Red Border

Here is how the options look in a spreadsheet:

Top/Bottom 10 Items Example

The "Top 10 Items..." and "Bottom 10 Items..." rules will highlight cells with one of the appearance options based on the cell value being the top or bottom values in a range.

Name Type 1 Speed Bulbasaur Grass 45 Ivysaur Grass 60 Venusaur Grass 80 Charmander Fire 65 Charmeleon Fire 80 Charizard Fire 100 Squirtle Water 43 Wartortle Water 58 Blastoise Water 78 Caterpie Bug 45 Metapod Bug 30 Butterfree Bug 70 Weedle Bug 50 Kakuna Bug 35 Beedrill Bug 75 Pidgey Normal 56 Pidgeotto Normal 71 Pidgeot Normal 101 Rattata Normal 72 Raticate Normal 97 Spearow Normal 70 Fearow Normal 100 Ekans Poison 55 Arbok Poison 80 Pikachu Electric 90 Raichu Electric 110 Sandshrew Ground 40 Sandslash Ground 65 Nidoran♀ Poison 41 Nidorina Poison 56

Copy Values

You can choose any range for where the Highlight Cell Rule should apply. It can be a few cells, a single column, a single row, or a combination of multiple cells, rows and columns.

Let's first apply the Top 10 Items... rule to the Speed values.

"Top 10 Items..." Rule, step by step:

1. Select the range C2:C31 for Speed values

2. Click on the Conditional Formatting icon in the ribbon, from Home menu
3. Select Top/Bottom Rules from the drop-down menu
4. Select Top 10 Items... from the menu

This will open a dialog box where you can specify the value and the appearance option.

5. Leave the default value 10 in the input field
6. Select the appearance option "Green Fill with Dark Green Text" from the dropdown menu

Now, the 10 cells with the top values will be highlighted in green:

Great! Now, the top 10 Speed values are easily identified.

Let's try the same with the bottom 10 Speed values.

Repeat the steps, but instead choose Bottom 10 Items... in the menu and select the "Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text" appearance option.

Now, the slowest values are also highlighted:

Notice that there are actually 11 items highlighted in red. Why could this be?

Let's sort the table with descending Speed values for a clue:

We can see that both Pidgey and Nidorina have a Speed of 56. So, they are tied for the 10th bottom value.

Top/Bottom 10% Example

The "Top 10%..." and "Bottom 10%..." rules will highlight cells with one of the appearance options based on the cell value being the top or bottom percent of values in a range.

Let's apply Top and Bottom 10% rules to the same dataset with sorted Speed values:

Name Type 1 Speed Raichu Electric 110 Pidgeot Normal 101 Charizard Fire 100 Fearow Normal 100 Raticate Normal 97 Pikachu Electric 90 Venusaur Grass 80 Charmeleon Fire 80 Arbok Poison 80 Blastoise Water 78 Beedrill Bug 75 Rattata Normal 72 Pidgeotto Normal 71 Butterfree Bug 70 Spearow Normal 70 Charmander Fire 65 Sandslash Ground 65 Ivysaur Grass 60 Wartortle Water 58 Pidgey Normal 56 Nidorina Poison 56 Ekans Poison 55 Weedle Bug 50 Bulbasaur Grass 45 Caterpie Bug 45 Squirtle Water 43 Nidoran♀ Poison 41 Sandshrew Ground 40 Kakuna Bug 35 Metapod Bug 30

Copy Values

You can choose any range for where the Highlight Cell Rule should apply. It can be a few cells, a single column, a single row, or a combination of multiple cells, rows and columns.

Let's first apply the Bottom 10%... rule to the Speed values.

"Bottom 10%..." Rule, step by step:

1. Select the range C2:C31 for Speed values

2. Click on the Conditional Formatting icon in the ribbon, from Home menu
3. Select Top/Bottom Rules from the drop-down menu
4. Select Bottom 10%... from the menu

This will open a dialog box where you can specify the value and the appearance option.

5. Leave the default value 10 in the input field
6. Select the appearance option "Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text" from the dropdown menu

Now, the bottom 10% of cells will be highlighted in red:

Notice that there are 3 highlighted cells.

There are 30 cells in the range, so 10% of that is 3 cells.

Let's try the same with the top 10% Speed values.

Repeat the steps, but instead choose Top 10%... in the menu and select the "Green Fill with Dark Green Text" appearance option.

Now, the fastest values are also highlighted:

Notice that there are actually 4 items highlighted in green.

We can see that both Charizard and Fearow have a Speed of 100. So, they are tied for the 3rd top value.

Both are included in the top 10% and are highlighted.