Colouring cells and rows
Mark the values that matter with colour, by rule, on a file of any size. Nothing in the file changes, and every colour can be taken off.
A colour rule picks out cells or whole rows that match a condition, so you can see them in context instead of filtering everything else away. Colouring is free in every edition.
Adding a colour
- From a column. Right-click a cell and choose Colour by this column. Pick the condition (is more than, is less than, is exactly or contains), type the value, choose whether to colour Just the cell or The whole row, pick one of ten colours, and press Colour.
- From a cell. Right-click a cell and choose Colour rows like this one to colour every row that shares that cell’s value.
- From Bix. Press Cmd+J and ask Bix: “colour the rows where salary is over 100000 in blue”, “make the North rows green”, or “highlight amount over 4000 in red”.
The ten colours are red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, pink, brown and grey. Numbers are compared as numbers, and money written as text, such as $70,000, counts as a number.
Several rules, in order
A column can have as many rules as you like, for example red for amounts over 10,000 and amber for amounts over 5,000. Where two rules reach the same cell, a colour set on the cell itself beats a row colour, and the most recent rule beats an older one.
Seeing and removing colours
Each rule appears as a chip above the grid, in its own colour. Click a chip to take that rule off. Remove all colours in the command palette (Cmd+K) clears the lot, and in the colour dialog Remove colours on this column clears one column. You can also tell the assistant “remove the colours” or “take the red off amount”.
Every colour is a step in the Timeline, so undo works, and a recipe records it. The file itself is never changed, and the cursor and selection keep the cell’s colour.
Taking colours with you
An Excel export carries the colours as real cell fills, with a cell’s own colour over its row’s. CSV, TSV, Parquet and JSON cannot hold colour, so those exports contain the data only.