Conditional formatting is a feature in Excel that allows you to automatically apply formatting, such as colors, icons, and data bars, to one or more cells based on the cell value. This feature can help you highlight important information in your worksheet and visualize data trends and patterns. Heres an example of how to use conditional formatting in Excel:

Suppose you have a sales data worksheet, and you want to see which salespeople are meeting their monthly sales goals. The sales goal is $4000 per month, so you can create a conditional formatting rule for any cells containing a value higher than $4000. To do this, you can follow these steps:

1. Select the cells you want to format.
2. Go to the Home tab and select the Conditional Formatting option under the Styles group.
3. Choose the required condition from the list of options found in the Conditional Formatting drop-down menu. For example, you can choose "Highlight Cells Rules" and then "Greater Than."
4. Enter the value you want to use as the threshold, in this case, $4000.
5. Choose the formatting you want to apply to the cells that meet the condition. For example, you can choose to fill the cells with a green color.

You can apply multiple conditional formatting rules to a cell range or worksheet, allowing you to visualize different trends and patterns in your data. Excel has several predefined styles or presets that you can use to quickly apply conditional formatting to your data. You can also customize the default rules for conditional formats to fit your requirements.

In summary, conditional formatting is a powerful feature in Excel that allows you to highlight cells that meet a specified condition and apply formatting to them automatically. It can help you visualize data trends and patterns and make your worksheets easier to understand.