Rule Manager for Excel | Fix Conditional Formatting & Data Validation

Content

• What is Rule Manager for Excel
• Key features
• Why use Rule Manager
• Installation instructions
• Donate
• Instructions
• Issues detected by Rule Manager
• Change history
• Credits

What is Rule Manager for Excel

Rule Manager for Excel is a free add-in that enables you to fix Conditional Formatting and Data Validation rules. Rule Manager is free of charge and works in Excel on-line and Teams, Excel for Windows and Mac 365, both 32 and 64 bits.

Rule Manager for Excel is the only add-in that can fix broken-up conditional formatting and Data Validation rules.

Key features

• Automatically batch-fix several issues with Conditional Formatting and Data Validation rules
• Scan Conditional Formatting rules
• Scan Data Validation rules
• Detect multi‑area range issues
• Detect empty‑cell references
• Detect duplicate rules
• Fix inverted bounds
• Fix table‑column partial references
• Highlight affected ranges
• Provide automatic fix suggestions

Why use Rule Manager for Excel

• Automatically fix issues Excel cannot fix
• Works across Excel Desktop, Web, and Teams
• Saves time cleaning up corrupted rules
• Free and actively maintained

Installation instructions

Web and Teams Excel

Install Rule Manager (Teams, Web Excel) now

A new Excel file will open in your browser with this information:

Click the "Accept and Continue" button in the task pane to start using the add-in. After clicking the button, Rule Manager will also be available in Excel within Teams.

If my website button does not work, open any Excel file in your browser and click the add-ins button. Then search for Rule Manager:

Click Add to add the add-in to your Web Excel.

Desktop Excel

Install Rule Manager (Desktop Excel) now

After clicking that button, the browser will ask permission to open Excel. Click Open and Excel will start and display this:

If the button above does not work for you, you can also install the tool by opening Excel and clicking Add-ins (On the Home tab). Then search for "rule manager":

To add Rule Manager to your Excel, click the Add button. 

Donate

If you like Rule Manager, please consider donating to help support it's future development:

Instructions

Ribbon

To use Rule manager, simply click the Rule manager button on the Review tab. Here is what the ribbon looks like in Windows Desktop Excel:

And this is Excel on-line:

If you have a single-line ribbon:

Buttons and features (from right to left)

Help button

After installing the add-in, a task pane opens displaying the Help tab, with information about the features of the add-in:

The Help section can be reopened any time by clicking the Help button in the pane.

Try it button

Click the "Try it" button to get a newly inserted worksheet with this information for you to play with:

The inserted worksheet includes a series of Conditional formatting and Data Validation rules with several issues.

CF and DV buttons

CF and DV scan work very much the same. Both perform a scan of the respective Conditional Formatting or Data Validation rules for the active worksheet. The number badges inside the CF and DV buttons shows how many rules the last scan on the active sheet detected.

Once a scan is done, all rules are displayed in a scrollable list. The ones marked with "Fix" have potential issues. Note that you can use the arrow keys to move up or down the list of rules.

The add-in caches scan results. Both the Scan button and the worksheet drop-down indicate approximately how long ago the sheet in question was last scanned. Click the Rescan button to get an up-to date rules listing. Note: After applying a fix to a rule, the worksheet will always be scanned again.

A rule may have more than one issue. Rule manager will list them all and suggest an automatic fix if there is one. Fixes may come with choices to be made too and you'll be able to select which fixes you want applied, using their associated check-box.

Here's an example of a rule with some issues. Note how the last shown issue is about a rule being applied to multiple areas:

By clicking on the underlined cell references, you can quickly check which range the rule applies to now (red boxes in the screen-shot), or to what new range the rule will be applied after you click the Apply button (the green box).

For more complicated (non-adjacent) multiple areas, several options may be available. Below you see an issue with three choices:

If you change the selected option, the description "From E3:E4, G6, G9 To E3:G9" will change accordingly and the new range will be highlighted on the sheet.

Note that after applying either the row-wise or the column-wise fix, a rescan of the rules may still highlight this rule as having an issue (because it may still span multiple non-adjacent ranges).

Scanning and cached scans

When you click either the DV or the CF Scan button, Rule Manager scans the currently selected worksheet if it has not been scanned before. If it has cached scan results, it will display them. You can use the "viewing" drop-down to switch to another worksheet's scan results.

Note how the drop-down also shows how long ago CF and DV rules were last scanned.

Next to the title "Validation Rules & Details" there is a button to (Re)scan the active sheet. The small arrow next to it allows you to have it scan all worksheets.

Auto button

Last, but not least (and the left-most button too) is the Auto clean button. This is a powerful and convenient way to quickly cleanup all CF and DV rules with a couple of preset fixes. Note that whichever you select by checking boxes (and choosing their options if present) will be applied to all rules of the active worksheet.

Auto clean will not fix all issues and does not give you the fine-grained control the DV and CF buttons give you for each rule. If you need to fully control what Rule Manager does, use the CF or DV buttons and process each rule in turn.

After the cleanup, Rule manager shows a summary of applied fixes at the top:

In addition, it shows a list of the changes it made close to the bottom of the pane. Click the Report button to have this list exported to an inserted worksheet.

Example

Here is a screen-shot of a typical "Before" and "After" view of the Manager Conditional Formatting dialog, before and after using Rule Manager for Excel:

Updating

If you are not sure you are using the latest version, click inside the Rule Manager pane and press control+F5 to ensure the latest version of Rule Manager is fetched from our server. The build number is listed close to the bottom of the pane and you can click it to find out what is new:

For Web Excel: Open your browser settings and clear its cache. Then close all browser windows and re-open it.

Issues detected by Rule Manager

Rule Manager detects the following issues:

• Conditional Formatting detections
  • Duplicate rules (fix available)
  • Over-broad applies-to (whole sheet / entire row / entire column) (fix available)
  • Multi-area applies-to (fix available)
  • In-table applies-to (expand within table data area) (fix available)
  • Broken reference in formula (#REF!) (fix available)
  • No condition / empty formula (report only)
  • Empty referenced cells (condition references blanks) (report only)
  • Inverted bounds (e.g., BETWEEN min > max) (fix available)
  • No formatting set on rule (fix available)
  • Named range appears empty (report only)
• Data Validation detections
  • Empty list source (report only)
  • Inverted bounds (e.g., BETWEEN min > max) (fix available)
  • Over-broad applies-to (fix available)
  • Multi-area applies-to (fix available)
  • In-table applies-to (expand within table data area) (fix available)
  • Protected/locked cells in applies-to (fix available)
  • No error alert configured (fix available)
  • Empty referenced cells (validation references blanks) (report only)
  • Named range appears empty (report only)

Change history

• Version 2.0.0.0 (2026-02-09):
  • Per-sheet viewing + cached scan results (switch sheets without re-scanning)
  • Scan upgrades: workbook scan option, scan age/stale indicator, CF/DV issue badges
  • Auto clean: safe batch fixes across CF + DV Progress modal + in-pane log, with “Report” export to a worksheet table
  • Smarter range fixes: multi-area consolidation, adjacent-data expansion, table-aware column fill
  • Safer duplicates: only auto-remove true duplicates; report “same condition, different formatting”
  • New detectors (examples): broken refs, inverted bounds, empty referenced cells, missing formatting, empty named ranges
  • DV safety + fixes: warn before overwriting other DV rules; unlock covered cells; add error alerts
• Version 2026-01-21: First public release
• Version 2026-01-15: Beta release

Credits

Special thanks to: Shirley Moreman, Henric Andersen, Khushnood Viccaji, Tim Tow, Roger Govier, and William Budd for doing beta tests.

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Frequently asked Questions