How to Create Progress Bars in Excel With Conditional Formatting

These days, we see progress bars everywhere; we see them online on our phones, androids, mp3 players and many other devices. A progress bar is a graphical representation of an ongoing process that gives us an idea on how long we still have to wait for it to complete.

Now you can add these colorful bars on your spreadsheets through Microsoft Excel 2010’s Conditional formatting feature.

To create a progress bar, you need to type a numeric value into the cell that you need to format. You can either type a value or use a formula. Next, we suggest that you resize it to a wider column to make it look more like a bar.

Then, click on Conditional Formatting, choose Data Bars and select More Rules.
Locate the New Formatting Rule and check the box that says “Show Bar Only”. Doing this will hide the value/formula you entered and it will not appear in the cell.

Next, go to Minimum and Maximum and choose Type as Number. Then, set the minimum and maximum value of your scale. Then customize the bar appearance. Remember that you need to make sure that you have selected Solid Fill and then choose the color you prefer to use. Click OK and that’s it!