How to Copy Conditional Formatting in Google Sheets

Managing spreadsheets can be a mess, especially if you have a massive amount of data. Conditional formatting is the best option for you to quickly sort out cells based on their value in Google Sheets. This feature allows you to understand the sheet better and track your goals even at a glance.

Meanwhile, there are situations where you need to copy conditional formatting from a cell to another. An example of this is when you are creating a market sales on spreadsheet and you use conditional formatting for the month of June. However, July comes and you have to update the sheet again and use the same formatting in this column.

Now, applying conditional formatting on a specific range of cells is easy. With this, copying it to other cells or sheets should also be effortless. If you have no idea how to do it, this tutorial is for you.

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Paint Format Tool

You might already be familiar with paint format or 'format painter.' It is a simple tool that you can use a specific format from a cell to another. This applies to conditional formatting too.

Here are the steps that you should follow:

Select the cell with conditional formatting that you want to copy.
After that, click the painter format tool in the toolbar, which will then allow you to copy the format.
Select the cells that you want to apply the formatting.

These steps are also applicable when copying the conditional format from a worksheet to another.

Copy + Paste Special

You will be surprised at how easy it is to use this trick. This is just copy-pasting the format of a specific range of cells to another.

Here is a more elaborate explanation to it:

Select the range of cells that you want to copy the conditional formatting.

Google Spreadsheet with product, June, and July sales data. Column C has conditional formatting applied and is circled in red

Right-click and choose copy option (you can also use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C)
Select the cells that you want to apply the conditional formatting to.
Right-click on the selected cells.
Hover over Paste Special and click 'Paste format only' from the option (to make it easier, use CONTROL + ALT + V).

Google Spreadsheet with product, June, and July sales data. Column E now has conditional formatting applied (copied from Column C) and is circled in red

Note that if you copy conditional formatting from a cell to another cell on the same sheet, it will not create a new rule for the cells where you pasted it. Meanwhile, copy-pasting a format of cells on a sheet to another will create a new rule for the second sheet.

Copy Conditional Formatting in a Google Sheets Spreadhseet

One of the easiest ways copy conditional formatting in google sheets is by using the copy formatting feature. Here are the steps:

Select the cell with conditional formatting that you want to copy
Right click on the the cell and click Ctrl + c on PC or ⌘ + c on Mac to Copy
Select the cells you want to paste the copied conditional formatting to
Right click on any of the selected cells and choose 'Paste Special' -> 'Paste Format Only'
Alternatively, click on the selected cells and click Ctrl + Alt + v on windows and ⌘ + Option + v on mac to paste

Your conditional formatting will be pasted to your highlighted cells in google sheets.

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