How to use Conditional Formatting in Google Data Studio

Today I’ll take a first look at the recently launched Conditional Formatting in Google Data Studio.

Conditional Formatting is one of the best ways to make data meaningful and understandable for your audience. It is found in Excel, Google Sheets and other spreadsheet tools. It’s a welcome addition to Data Studio!

Here is a Data Studio report with two tables, each with different Conditional Formatting rules.

Creating a single rule using Conditional Formatting

Here’s how you create the rule for the first table.

A gif image showing how to use Conditional Formatting in Google Data Studio

We can see the Color type is “Single color” – hopefully this means that two-colour and mutliple-colour formatting will be added in the future!

We can choose to have rules for our dimensions or metrics. In this case I’ve chosen to have a rule for Sessions that any grouping of sessions above 500 needs to be highlighted.

Within the ‘Color and style’ section I’ve chosen to highlight just the Sessions with red text and a yellow background.

A rule for Conditional Formatting in Google Data Studio

Creating multiple rules using Conditional Formatting

In the table show below I have three different rules applied.

A chart showing different colour rows and columns based on formatting in data studio

The first highlights if a Source/Medium contains the text “organic”. So as you see in the screenshot above, three different Source/Medium combinations that contain “organic” are highlighted.

The second rule highlights any Sessions (and their comparisons) that are greater or equal to 500.

And the third rule specifies that if any Source/Medium contains the text “referral” then the entire row must be highlighted in pale red.

rules for Conditional Formatting in Google Data Studio

The Conditional Formatting feature is brand new, so I expect there will be lots of adjustments in the coming weeks to the feature. So expect this post about Conditional Formatting in Google Data Studio to be updated!

Conditional Formatting using a Colour Scale

In March 2020 Google Data Studio added the option of being able to use a colour scale for conditional formatting.

colour scale conditional formatting in google data studio

At the time of writing there were only some set colours available, but they add some much needed colour to the data studio charts.

Below is a table with multiple columns having colour scale conditional formatting.

colour scale conditional formatting in google data studio

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I’m Michael


I’m a South African digital analyst living in Toronto, Canada. I blog about digital marketing, web analytics and data visualization.

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Michael Howe-Ely