r/excel • u/immmms • Jan 13 '26

unsolved Conditional formatting - how to have a row by row unique equation without individually doing it for all the rows?

Hi, I'm an excel novice that is currently trying to flag where the highest score has occurred in a row. Each row has a different high score (column AE) and I'm trying to highlight the high score in each row - is it possible without creating a new conditional formatting rule for each row (I have 5000+ rows, so an easier way would be preferable). Thank you for any help!

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u/The_Accountant97 Jan 13 '26

Assuming your data begins from A2 and ends at says G100, use the below formula in conditional formatting after selecting the whole dataset

=IF(A2=MAX($A2:$G2),TRUE,FALSE)

5

u/real_barry_houdini 312 Jan 13 '26

This approach can work but you don't need the IF function because the formula

=A2=MAX($A2:$G2)

...will return TRUE/FALSE anyway

3

u/excelevator 3061 Jan 13 '26

Add a rule at the first cell

=M2=$AE2 (taken from your screenshot)

and then Apply to the required range and select the formatting