Change All Red Font Cells to Blue Font

October 13, 2023 - by Bill Jelen

Problem: I’ve marked a few hundred cells in a large workbook using a red font. My manager is superstitious and wants all the red cells changed to blue. The red cells are not contiguous. I did not use cell styles to apply red.

Strategy: You can use Find and Replace to change formats. Here’s what you do:

• 1. Select the entire range that contains the red cells.

• 2. Press Ctrl+H. Excel will display the Find and Replace dialog.

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  3. Click the Options button to show additional options.

• 4. Leave the Find What and Replace With boxes blank.

• 5. On the right side, choose the dropdown next to the top Format button. Choose Format From Cell. Click on a cell with a red font.

• 6. Assuming you don’t already have a cell formatted in blue, click on the bottom Format button. Excel will display the Find Format dialog. Go to the Font tab and choose a blue color. Click OK to return to Find and Replace.

• 7. Click Replace All.

Results: The red fonts are changed to blue.

Gotcha: When you choose the format from an existing cell, Excel picks up all the formats. When you perform the Replace, if a format does not match exactly, the cell will not be replaced. For example, if some cells were left-justified instead of right-justified, they will not be replaced.

This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel

Title photo by Tim Johnson on Unsplash