Say you have a Project Management list with a Due Date column. You want the Due Date column to indicate it’s status based on it’s color. If it is past due it’s red, due today is yellow, or due later is green. This can be accomplished by using column formatting. Let’s build this out!
The first step is to create the list. Create a Blank list by clicking New > List > Blank List on your home-page ( or in site contents ) and name this list Project Management.
This will automatically give you the title column- add on to the list by adding the Column ‘Due Date’ This will be Type ‘Date and time’.
Now that we’ve created the Due Date column we can give it the conditional styling we want. Click on the ‘Due Date’ column, select Column settings, and then Format this column.
This gives use two options- Format Dates or Conditional formatting. Select Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules. This will give you a list of all the rules you have for this list and column type. Delete the rule currently there ( Show all values as { Grey } ). Click Add Rule. Fill in three Rules using the Table below.
| Not Due | Past Due | Due Today |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
| Due Date ( Column ) is after Today ( relative ) | Due Date ( Column ) is before Today ( relative ) | Due Date ( Column ) is equal to Today ( relative ) |
When you have created all of your rules try adding values into the list. You should see that the column formatting works and adds color based on the date.
Extra – Mark Complete Column
Okay, but what if you have a Yes/No Complete column to mark the project as done? The conditional formatting on the Due Date wouldn’t change, right? Yes, it doesn’t automatically add it to conditional formatting but we can definitely add it as a rule! Instead of adding another condition into each of the three rules ( unless you want very specific coloring ) you can just add another rule.
Click the Due Date column, click Column settings, and then select ‘Format this column’. Create another rule- If Complete ( column ) is equal to, Yes. Select the color you want the completed projects to be ( I just chose purple ) and click save.
If you add a completed project to the list right now it will not work, this is because the list goes through each rule after one-another. Therefor, when you edit the ‘Project Due on the 18th’ with the due date past-due, since the ‘If Due Date is before today’ rule is before the ‘If Complete is equal to Yes’ rule that rule will be applied and it will skip the other rules.
To overrule this we need to move the rule up to the top of the rule list. Click on the three ellipses next to the name of the Complete rule and select Move up until it is at the top.
Summary
That’s it! You’ve created a list with column formatting to be able to visually sort at a glance! Now you can move on to column formatting for payment lists and more. I hope this helped you in your management journey! If you like this post be sure to leave a comment!
Graphgod 
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