Copying formatting from conditional formatting without the rules

Question

I tend to use a lot of conditional formatting in my spreadsheets. Unfortunately, this leads to two problems:
     1) I need more rules than are allowed (this seems to be related to the height of my screen... probably because the dialog box doesn't have a scrollbar)
     2) This really, really slows things down, especially when combined with cell references, and particularly when I'm trying to rearrange cells (as far as I can see Numbers has a tendency to freeze and/or blank out the table I'm working on)
The easiest way I can see out of my predicament would be to somehow remove the conditional formatting rules while keeping the actual formatting... like copy-and-pasting values instead of the actual cells (with intact formulae). Is this possible? And if possible, how would I go about doing it?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Up to 15 rules can be set for conditional formating of a cell.
1)
Considering that the usual purpose of conditional formatting is to flag 'unusual' values, and to make the 'condition' instantly visible and recognizable, that seems an over generous number. If a cell or group of cells on your table 'needs' more than 15 possible formats (the base format and 15 others based on rules), perhaps what's needed is a re-thinking of why that many are needed, and whether having that many formats adequately answers that 'why'.
If you really do need that many, you can set then, even if your display height is filled with fewer than that. Additional rules may be inserted after any existing rule, not just the last one. note, though, that the conditions are evaluated in the order the rules are listed, from top to bottom, and the format is set by the first rule encountered whose condition is met.
2)
Not surprising. Numbers recalculates the entire table each time a value in the table is changed. That calculation includes through each list of conditional formatting rules until a match is found (or the end of the list is reached), and includes setting the new format for each affected cell.
3)
Not that I'm aware of. The base format of the cell may be copied (option-command-C) and pasted elsewhere (option-command-V), and that pair of operations will include any conditional format rules that had been set for the original cell.
But conditional formatting is just that—a set of rules that applies a set of attributes to a cell when a specific condition is met. The applied format exists only when the condition is met, and can't be copied except by copying the rule—actually the whole set of rules for that cell—which puts you no further ahead.
3a) You could, of course, change the base format of the cell to match the colour and style applied by the conditional rule, then clear the conditional format rules for that cell or set of cells. That would 'remove the rules while keeping the (applied) formatting', and would leave the formulas intact. seems to me a game not worth the candle, though.
Regards,
Barry