Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Mar 07, 2018

Highlight First Occurrence across mutliple colmuns and rows.

I am having trouble getting my conditional formatting to work. I am trying to highlight the first occurrence of value in a range of D19:I137. I tried condition formatting duplicate value and it ...

Formulas & Functions

Need Help

Haytham Amairah

Silver Contributor

Mar 08, 2018

Karen,

Please forget the formula in the previous reply!
Looks like it's not working so well!

However, I'll guide you to this rich and helpful https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2016/03/09/how-to-highlight-duplicates-excel/#highlight-duplicates-multiple-columns!

When you open it, scroll down to find this subject:

Highlight duplicates in multiple columns without 1^st occurrences

But please note that the solution in the article is the opposite of what you want, so please change the operator in the formulas from (>) to (=) to highlight 1^st occurrences in multiple columns without duplicates.

I've tested this solution for you, please find the attached file.

Hope that helps.

Highlight First Occurrence across mutliple colmuns and rows.xlsx12 KB

Willy Lau

Iron Contributor

Mar 08, 2018

That is a great article. Thanks for sharing.

Haytham Amairah wrote:

Karen,

Please forget the formula in the previous reply!
Looks like it's not working so well!

However, I'll guide you to this rich and helpful article!

When you open it, scroll down to find this subject:

Highlight duplicates in multiple columns without 1^st occurrences

But please note that the solution in the article is the opposite of what you want, so please change the operator in the formulas from (>) to (=) to highlight 1^st occurrences in multiple columns without duplicates.

I've tested this solution for you, please find the attached file.

Hope that helps.