Conditional format on cells, based on cell's value

Hello everyone!
I have a read a dozen of posts looking for a solution to my problem but no luck.
Anyways, I have names of children in a spreadsheet (I work as a teacher) and I would like my column labelled preferences, to be visible only when I select the name of a particular child.
As an example, we suppose that the column Preferences is hidden. I select the name of the child and voila! the cell preferences appears along with the surrounding cells.
How can I do that?
I would prefer an easy solution and mostly not macro’s since I am not accustomed using it :slight_smile:
i would be really grateful for any advices,
Magda

I have a read a dozen of posts looking for a solution to my problem but no luck

and I can’t decipher from your description what your problem is.

  • You can’t show part of a column based on an "selected* value (either a column is shown as a whole or it it hidden, but it is impossible to show a specific cell of a hidden column. In addition, there is no way at all to unhide a column with based on any Formula [not talking about macros according to your preferences])
  • What is meant by appears along with the surrounding cells
  • What got this to do with Conditional Formatting at all

From my perspective you are looking for a solution based on Filters (eg. Data -> AutoFilter or Data -> More Filters -> Standard Filter...).

It would be very helpful, if you could upload a sample file showing :

  • The data you have
  • The input you want to make where
  • The result you want to get

…Cont’d…


Please do not use Add Answer but edit your original question to enhance the details of your question (answers are reserved for solutions to a problem on this Q&A site). Thanks in advance …

hello @ Magdalene Ren.:
it’s difficult without a sample, your case is clear to you but needs guessing for others,
a technical description could help, i have xxx in cell A1, yyyy in call B1, and if i put zzz somewhere i want …
three ‘kiss’ suggestions:

  • filtering is not ‘dynamic’ in calc, if you want it to react on input or selection you’d have to build some ‘wrapper’ around it with e.g. macros or formulas,
  • there are plenty formulas which are dynamic, ‘lookup’, hlookup’, ‘vlookup’, ‘match’ … look around and pick what fulfills your needs,
  • conditional format is dynamic, you might try to work around the ‘not ability’ of hiding columns by formatting cells with ‘white text on white backgrund’ depending on conditions,
    all these require distinct cells / values which to observe … to react onto the ‘selection’ you are at macros, or use ‘data - validity’ to build a picklist for one cell with the pupils names as items,
    combining above you can achieve a lot!