Select Alternate Rows on a Spreadsheet
Ever wanted to select every other row i.e. alternate rows? Perhaps you want to apply a background color to them. Maybe you want to delete them. Attempting this manually on hundreds of rows is a waste of effort because it can be done automatically. Here is the software agnostic explanation whether you're using Excel, Numbers, OpenOffice.org Calc, Google Docs or Gnumeric.org.
Steps
- Choose a blank cell in the same row but adjacent to the column you want to sort.
- Type in =MOD(ROW();2)
- If you're using Excel type =MOD(ROW(),2)
- Fill this formula to the bottom.
- Now you can either;
- Sort the whole sheet by this column in ascending alphabetical order or,
- Apply a filter.
- To apply a background color to alternate rows, go to conditional formatting.
- Choose Formula is then =MOD(ROW();2) but again replace the ; with a , if you're using Excel.
- Choose a color.
- Click OK.
