How to Highlight Top 3 Numbers in Column

Learn how to highlight the top three numbers in a column using conditional formatting in Google Sheets. This tutorial walks you through the steps to create a custom formula for effective data visualization.

Here's how to highlight the top three numbers in a single column. We can see here that we have some scores, and these are the three highest numbers. Our custom formula is over here, but let's start from the beginning. We're gonna highlight the column that we want to highlight in Go up to format , go to conditional formatting , and over on the right side you'll see conditional format rules . Our range right now is the B column. We may change that later. Up to you if you want to format rules , and we're gonna change this format . Rule to custom formula is we're gonna start with equal sign and we're in the B column, so we wanna say equals B one is greater than large.

And this is a formula that has two things inside of the parentheses, the range , and a number . The range is gonna be B colon, B. Comma. And then if you want the top number one, if you want top two, two top three. Three. One thing we need to change is this greater than needs to be greater than or equal to. And if you notice on the left side, actually let's change this to that purple so we can really see it. The score, the word score is highlighted. So what I like to do is actually go up to the range and type in B two colon B.

We do need to change our formula to be B two is greater than or equal to large B colon, B three, and now we get the correct answer. However, one extra thing we can do is let's change the range so that we highlight the whole row . If you wanna do a colon H, and actually again, A two colon H, you'll notice it's only highlighting the A column because we're telling it to look in the B column. And what's actually happening under the hood is that this isn't staying B in the A column, it's looking at B. In the B column it's looking at C. In the C column, it's looking at D. It's looking at the cell to the right.

So in order to stop that and say, Hey, only look at B, like slap its hand and say only B, put a dollar sign in front of the B and also in front of the B, colon B, and now you see the entire row , or actually all across the range . So it stops at H over here. If you want to continue on, just do Z or wherever your range is going. Actually, it's only going to Y here. Or you only wanna do A two colon B, and it's only gonna do A and B column, but it's always going to look at that B column for should it be highlighting or not. Hopefully, this was really fun for you and really interesting to see this

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