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Often you may want to highlight a cell in Google Sheets if it contains a value that exists in a list.
Fortunately this is easy to do using the custom formula function in Google Sheets.
The following example shows how to do so.
Example: How to Highlight Cell if Value Exists in List
Suppose we have the following two lists of basketball teams in Google Sheets:
Suppose we would like to highlight each cell in the All Teams list that exists in the Good Teams list.
To do so, we can highlight the cell range A2:A11, then click the Format tab, then click Conditional Formatting from the dropdown menu:
In the Conditional format rules panel that appears on the right side of the screen, click the Format cells if dropdown, then choose Custom formula is, then type in the following formula:
=COUNTIF($C$2:$C$6,A2)>0
Once you click Done, each cell in the All Teams list that exists in the Good Teams list will automatically be highlighted in light green:
Note: In this example we chose to use a light green fill for the conditional formatting of the cells, but you can choose any fill color you’d like.