If, like me, you include a question mark “?” in Excel cells to show where you have outstanding queries or work to do (either by itself or with some other text e.g. “ask John?”, “?same as before”) there is a simple way to automatically highlight them.

I thought of using conditional formatting with a formula using the FIND, SEARCH, IF and ISERROR functions but there is a much simpler solution:

Click the first cell in the range, and then drag to the last cell.

Click HOME > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Text that Contains…

In the Format cells that contain the text box enter ~? and select the formatting you desire – I use a custom yellow fill so it looks like a highlighter.

That’s it, you’re done – the tilde ensures the question mark is treated as a literal rather than a wildcard.

Hope this helps! and for more cheap truths about free ways to lose weight see the other posts on my blog http://www.gichow.com.