How to Use Icon Sets in Excel? A Step-by-Step Guide
(Note: This guide on how to use Icon Sets in Excel is suitable for all Excel versions including Office 365)
Icons have always been a visual aid in ascertaining certain information and greatly improve the aesthetic likability of the content. When using Excel, which involves a large amount of data, it might be hard to ascertain data without giving it a deeper look. In such cases, you can use icons to assist you to read the information.
In this article, I will walk you through the steps involved in how to use icon sets in Excel.
You’ll learn:
- What Are Icon Sets in Excel?
- How to Use Icon Sets in Excel?
- List of Icon Sets Available in Excel
- Example
- How to Create a Custom Icon Set Formatting?
- How to Remove Icon Sets in Excel?
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What Are Icon Sets in Excel?
Icon sets are visual representations of your data that are a part of Excel’s conditional formatting. In simple terms, icon set formatting adds icons within the cell to make it easy to compare with other values in the selected cell range.
Using Icon sets, you can add icons to cells to indicate how much the value varies within a selected cell range. The icon sets come under the conditional formatting option, and it helps to understand better the evaluation of a comparison sheet, selection result, or monitor the stocks/sales/profit, etc.
You can compare multiple columns of data side-by-side using the icon sets formatting to compare one set of values with the other.
Icon set helps users:
- To quickly identify the result/output for better understanding.
- To assign multiple visual interpretations for different values in the same sheet, with a variety of built-in icon sets to compare mid, high, and low-range values.
- To create a custom icon set to represent data to be formatted.
How to Use Excel Icon Sets?
In the following steps, let us look at how to use Excel icon sets. The premade Icon sets are found in the Home ribbon under the Conditional Formatting option.
- Click on the Conditional Formatting dropdown box.
- Locate the Icon sets from the list of options displayed.
List of Icon Sets Available in Excel
- Click on the Conditional Formatting dropdown box from the Home ribbon.
- When you place the cursor on Icon sets, it displays the available formatting types.
You can use these sets separately to interpret the format values in Icons.
- Directional,
- Shapes,
- Indicators, and
- Ratings
Example
Let us see how to use Excel icon sets with an example.
Consider the scenario where you have been assigned to evaluate the acting performance of 15 candidates based on scores (out of 10). You can use Icon sets to interpret the results of the audition alongside the cell containing the scores.
Step 1:
- Open a new blank workbook from Microsoft Office Excel.
- Create or Select the list containing the data.
- To select the data, drag it down using the mouse or select cells holding the Shift key.
Step 2:
- Clicking any Icon set from the Conditional formatting dropdown box automatically formats the selected cell range.
- For this example, there are candidates in the selected, waiting, and rejected lists. Therefore, you can use the Icon style format Indicators and it applies to the data as follows
Step 3:
- Now, you can notice that the default format rule is applied, which is fine but, the eligibility criteria vary within organizations. Therefore, the format rule has to be modified accordingly.
- To format the data based on your conditions, use the More Rules option available at the end of the icon set types list.
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How to Create a Custom Icon Set Formatting?
If the default conditional formatting is not what you expected, you can customize the formatting options either using the More Rules/New rule options.
- Click on the More rules option under Icon Sets, you will see several formatting conditions that can be applied to your data.
- In the dialog box, under Edit the Rule Description, choose the Icon Sets format style and the Icon style that would best interpret the data after formatting.
- Before moving any further, first change the value Type to Number.
- Enter the Value with which to compare the data in the cells. In this case, let’s fix 5 as the minimum score to compare the candidates.
- Therefore, a value equal to 5 becomes the waiting list, any value greater than 5 is selected and any value below 5 is rejected.
- Finally, click Ok to view the formatted results.
How to Remove Icon Sets in Excel?
- Once the format is done if you want only certain cells to display the icon representation use the Clear rules option.
- To remove icon set formatting in cells, select the cells you want to remove icon sets.
- Click on
Home → Conditional formatting → Clear Rules → Clear Rules from selected cells.
- This option removes the Icon sets formatting from the selected cell range at once. To remove the format for the entire sheet, choose Clear Rules > Clear Rules from Entire Sheet.
- Use the above steps to clear the conditional formatting from the entire sheet.
Also, read
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Frequently Asked Questions
How to insert icons in cells for better data visualization?
Insert icons on any selected cell range using the Icon Sets option under conditional formatting. It interprets the data for better visual understanding, especially while evaluating multiple data entries in a single workbook.
What are the types of Icon sets available under conditional formatting in Excel?
There are 4 main categories of Icon sets namely
Directional – a set of arrows to compare cells in a directional sense.
Shapes – a set of traffic light colors that can be used to denote the status/progress of values.
Indicators – symbols indicating results such as pass, fail, or waiting list.
Ratings – set of stars, bar graph, quarters, and boxes interpreting minimum to maximum values.
Can you customize Excel Icon Sets?
Yes, you can modify the Excel Icon Sets format the data based on minimum criteria with which to compare the values by using the More Rules option. Hover over to the Home ribbon, click on Conditional formatting > Icon sets > More rules
You can customize your format by entering the values, type, and icon style.
Closing Thoughts
In this article, we saw how to use Excel Icon sets, how to customize them, and even remove them from the sheet. Icon sets in Excel are the perfect way to compare values in the selected cell range. The Icon sets enhance the overall readability of the project and are extremely helpful in evaluating performances over some time.
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Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
