How to Highlight Text that Contain a String in Google Sheets

When working with Google sheets, you often need to highlight the text based on certain rules, for example, the text contains a certain string. This is very similar to Microsoft Excel and you can use the conditional formatting.

Step 1: Select the text or the data range that you want to highlight;

Step 2: Click the "Format" tab from the ribbon;

Step 3: Click the "Conditional formatting" from the drop-down list;

Step 4: On the right of your spreadsheet, you will see the "Conditional format rule" panel. In the "Format rules" box, select "Text contains" and type the search text string, e.g., "on";

Step 5: If you want a different color from the default color, you can change the color in the "Formatting style" section;

Step 6: After you click the "Done" button, the text that contains the text string you entered should be in the proper color, e.g., green;

Step 7: Google sheets set up many rules to highlight text, other than "text contains", you actually have many other rules such as "is empty", "text starts with". Please select the proper rules for your data in the panel.

Step 8: If you want to clear the rules you set up, you can delete in the panel;

Step 9: If you want clear all the formatting rules you set up, you can click the "Format" tab from the ribbon again and click "Clear formatting" from the drop-down list.

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