How to shade every other or alternate rows in Excel?

To improve readability, some people shade every other row in a busy Excel sheet. But in a worksheet, if there are so many rows to be shaded, and you have to do it one by one, it will waste a lot of time. Are there any simple ways to do this quickly?These methods show you how to shade alternate rows or columns in Excel.

To shade every other row with Conditional Formatting formula in Excel
To shade every other row quickly and timesaving with Kutools for Excel

To shade every other row with Conditional Formatting formula in Excel

1. Select the range that you want to shade, then click Home>> Conditional Formatting>> New Rule... See screenshot:

2. Then a New Formatting Rule dialog box will pop out. Select Use a formula to determine which cells to format item. Then Input the formula “=MOD(ROW(),2)” in Format values where this formula is true.

3. Then click the Format… button, another Format Cells dialog box will pop out. Go to Fill tab and choose one colour for shading the background. See screenshot:

4. Click OK to return the New Formatting Rule dialog box, and also you will see the colour in the Preview box.

5. Then click OK. You will get the result you want. See screenshot:

Notes:

1. Insert or delete a row in the shading range and you will see that the shading persists.

2. If you want to shade alternate columns, using this formula “=MOD(COLUMN(),2)”.

To shade every other row quickly and timesaving with Kutools for Excel

With the Alternate Row / Column Shading utility of the third party add-in Kutools for Excel, you can shade alternate rows or columns quickly and conveniently.

1. Select the range that you want to shade. Click Kutools > Format > Alternate Row/ Column Shading. See screenshot:

2. In the Alternate Row / Column Shading dialog box, you need to do as follows:

(1) Select Rows option in the Apply Shading to section. (2) Choose the Conditional formatting option in the Shading method section. (3) Specify the color you want to use from the Shade color drop-down list. (4) In the Shade every box, enter the alternate rows number you want to shade. For example, we want to shade every one row in selected range, then enter number 1. (5) Click OK

Then you can see every 1 row of selected range is shaded with conditional formatting immediately as below screenshot shown:

To shade every other row quickly and timesaving with Kutools for Excel