How to Color Alternate Rows in Google Sheets

Microsoft Excel provides a handy feature called “Quick Styles” to help you quickly format a selected range as a striped table. The table can have zebra lines meaning alternating rows are formatted with different colors.

Alternate Row Colors in Google Sheets

In Google Sheets, you can use conditional formatting combined with a simple Google Formula to create a table formatting like zebra strips. You can apply alternating colors to both rows and columns in Google Sheets easily.

Here’s the trick.

Open a Google Sheet and choose Conditional formatting from the Format menu. Select Custom Formula from the dropdown and put this formula in the input box.

=ISEVEN(ROW())

Select a Background color for the rule and set the range in A1 notation. For instance, if you wish to apply alternating colors to rows 1 to 100 for columns A to Z, set the range as A1:Z100.

Click the “Add another rule” link and repeat the steps but set =ISODD(ROW()) as the custom formula and choose a different background color. Save the rules and the zebra stripes would be automatically applied to the specified range of cells.

Google Formulas with Conditional Formatting

Tip: If you wish to extend this technique to format columns with different colors, use the =ISEVEN(COLUMN()) formula. Simple!

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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