Cell Row Column Highlighter for Spreadsheets

Highlight the active row, column or cell in Google Sheets and Excel. Pick any color, per-spreadsheet and per-tab settings.

Never lose your place in a wide spreadsheet again. Cell Row Column Highlighter shades the row, column or cell you are working in, in Google Sheets and Excel for the web. It draws a focus crosshair on top of the page — it never writes to your file, and it never changes your data. --- Version 1.0.0 Asks for less than ever. The extension now requests exactly two permissions — somewhere to store your settings, and its own side panel — and declares no host permissions. It runs only on Google Sheets and Excel for the web, which Chrome shows as site access for those two addresses when you install. Choosing how the cell you're editing looks now works in Excel too. Where the row and column highlights cross, the color used to double up, making the one cell you're typing in darker than everything around it. You can leave that cell clear, or mark it with an outline instead, while the crosshair around it stays exactly as it was. This was Google Sheets only in 0.3.0; it now works in both, at any zoom level. Also in this release: the highlight tracks worksheet tab switches immediately instead of lagging or briefly showing the previous tab's color, and an idle spreadsheet now does no background work at all. --- WHAT IT DOES • Highlight the row, the column, both as a crosshair, or just the active cell - based on what you choose! • Active cell only mode marks the selected cell or range, and stays visible on top of the spreadsheet's own selection tint • Choose how the cell you're editing is treated where the bands cross it — tinted, left clear, or outlined • Choose any color — hex input, native color picker, or one-click presets • Adjust opacity, or switch to an outline instead of a fill so your own cell colors stay untouched SETTINGS SCOPED THE WAY YOU WORK Apply one look to all spreadsheets, to a single spreadsheet, or to individual tabs. A checklist lets you pick exactly which tabs get highlighted. Each spreadsheet remembers its own scope, so switching files restores that file's choice instead of carrying the last one over. CHANGES LAND INSTANTLY Move a slider or pick a color and the sheet repaints live — no refreshing, no losing your place. If something ever looks off, a quick page reload sorts out almost anything. A SIDE PANEL, NOT A POPUP The controls open in Chrome's side panel and stay open while you work, so you see each adjustment land instead of reopening a menu to tweak it. WORKS IN EXCEL FOR THE WEB, PROPERLY Not just Google Sheets. Every mode works in both, including at zoomed-in and zoomed-out view levels. The highlight survives Excel's ribbon and pane relayouts, and multi-range selections merge into clean bands instead of stacking into darker patches. PRIVACY The extension never reads your cell contents. There are no servers, no network requests of any kind in its code, and your settings stay on your own device. PERMISSIONS AND WHY Two, and neither touches your data: • Storage — save your highlight preferences on your device • Side panel — show the settings panel That is the whole list. The extension declares no host permissions. Its highlighting runs only on Google Sheets and Excel for the web, as set in the extension itself, and it can reach nothing else. If a spreadsheet was already open when you installed or updated, reload that page once. Anything you open afterwards just works. Built by SheetCity. Questions or a bug to report: https://sheetcity.com/contact/?ref=crch_store