Forum Discussion
Find mismatches
I want a way to flag or highlight a cell in Column B if the content does not exactly match the content on the same row in Column A. My spreadsheet has hundreds of rows of data, and just a few mismatc...
Yes—use a formula-based conditional formatting rule.
- Select your data in column B, for example B2, with B2 as the active cell.
- Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule > Use a formula to determine which cells to format.
- Enter:=NOT(EXACT($A2,$B2))
- Click Format, choose a fill color, and click OK.
Each B cell will be highlighted if it doesn’t exactly match column A on the same row. EXACT catches differences in capitalisation and spaces, including trailing spaces.
If you don’t care about upper/lowercase differences, use this instead:
=$A2<>$B2
Make sure the row number in the formula matches the first row of your selected range. These rules compare cell contents, not visual formatting such as font or fill color.