Highlight Issues
See your findings on the model. Highlight Issues paints every cell that carries an open review issue in a color for its severity, so the spread of problems is visible at a glance — without changing your model. It is a view you toggle on and off, not a formatting edit.
The scenario
You’ve flagged a dozen issues across an unfamiliar model and want to see where they cluster — which sheet, which corner — or show a colleague the spread before a handoff. Highlight Issues colors the flagged cells in place so the pattern jumps out, then clears cleanly when you’re done.
Where to find it
ModelXcel Pro tab → Audit group → Highlight Issues (keytip HI). It is a toggle button: click to turn the overlay on, click again to turn it off. Unlike the Risk Heatmap split button, this one does show a pressed state, so the ribbon tells you whether the lens is on.
What it colors
It paints cells that have an open review issue, by severity:
| Severity | Fill |
|---|---|
| Critical | #E5415E (red) |
| High | #FFC8C8 (light red) |
| Medium | #FFEBC8 (amber) |
| Low | #DCF5DC (green) |
| Info | Not colored |
Only issues whose status maps to Open or In Progress are highlighted — Resolved/Closed issues are not — and Info severity is deliberately left uncolored. Where more than one issue lands on a cell, the highest severity wins. If nothing qualifies, the toggle won’t stick and you’ll see “No open issues to highlight. Create review issues with a severity of Low or above, then toggle again.”
It is a temporary overlay, not a saved fill
This is the most important thing to understand. The colors are real cell interior fills — but the add-in snapshots each cell’s original fill before painting and restores it exactly when the lens comes off. Two consequences:
- Turning the lens on clears Excel’s native undo. You remove it by toggling off (which restores your fills), not with
Ctrl+Z. - The colors are kept out of the saved file automatically (next section).
It updates live: edit, add, or resolve an issue while the lens is on and the colors refresh automatically.
Save & close behavior
On save: the add-in strips the highlights (restores your original fills) before the file is written, then reapplies them after the save completes — so the on-disk workbook never contains highlight colors, but your screen still does. On close: the highlights are removed so they don’t persist.
If it can’t neutralize the lens, it cancels the save or close
The add-in will not bake highlight colors into your file. If it can’t safely strip the lens, it cancels the save (or close) and warns you rather than writing colored cells. If you hit that, toggle Highlight Issues off manually and try again (or reopen Excel as the message suggests).
One lens at a time
Highlight Issues, Highlight Audit, and the Risk Heatmap are mutually exclusive — a single coordinator allows only one painted lens at a time. Turning this one on while another is active prompts: “Currently showing {other lens}. Switch to Issue Highlights? Existing highlights will be removed.” Confirm to swap (the other lens is removed and its fills restored first); decline and nothing changes — the toggle simply won’t stick. Rapid double-clicks during a switch are ignored rather than stacking.
Multiple workbooks
The lens is bound to the workbook you turned it on in. Saving or closing a different workbook doesn’t touch these highlights or trigger the cancel-on-fail guard; editing an issue in another workbook doesn’t repaint this one. If the bound workbook is closed, the lens state is pruned cleanly on the next highlight action.
What is written where
- Workbook (temporary): cell
Interiorfills on the flagged cells, neutralized before every save and on close. - Memory only: each painted cell’s original fill (for exact restore) and the lens on/off + bound-workbook state.
- Never: nothing about highlights is written to the
.mxreviewsidecar or persisted into the saved.xlsx.
Undo & recovery
Nothing to undo — toggle off (or close the workbook) and every cell returns to its original fill. Because it’s an overlay rather than a style edit, no real formatting is altered. In the rare case of an abnormal termination while the lens is on, re-open the workbook and toggle the lens on and off once to restore fills.
Caveats & limitations
- Open issues only, Low and above. Resolved/Closed issues and Info-severity issues are not colored — if “nothing colors,” that’s usually why.
- The colors are real fills. They clear native undo and must be neutralized before save/close (which the add-in does, cancelling if it can’t). Don’t leave the lens on to “save a colored copy” — it’s a view, not a formatting tool.
- One lens at a time. If the toggle won’t stay pressed, another lens (Risk Heatmap or Highlight Audit) is active and you declined the switch.
Related
- Review Issues & Flag Cell — create the issues this lens colors.
- Highlight Audit — the same idea for audit status instead of issue severity.
- Risk Heatmap — the third in-grid lens, for risk and structure.