For a plain numeric column, you do not need an add-on. Conditional formatting handles it, and we will not pretend otherwise.
The interesting problem starts when "the max" means the best, and best lives in a sentence instead of a number.
The Standard Way (Conditional Formatting)
Select your range, say A1:A100. Open Format, then Conditional formatting. Choose "Custom formula is" and enter this.
=A1=MAX($A$1:$A$100)The first reference must match the top-left cell of your selection. The range inside MAX gets locked with dollar signs so it does not drift.
Three gotchas trip people up. If your selection starts at A2 but the formula still says A1, every highlight shifts down a row. If you drop the dollar signs, the range slides for each cell and paints the wrong ones. And if the column mixes negative numbers with blank cells, MAX reads the blanks as zero and highlights an empty row.
Get those three right and the highest value lights up. That is the whole job for numbers.
The FITS Way (When Best Is Not a Number)
MAX cannot read meaning. Give it 100 support tickets and ask for the most urgent one, and it has nothing to compare. There is no number in the cell, just text.
So you make a number first. With FITS, add a helper column that scores each row.
=FITS("Rate the urgency of this support ticket from 1 to 10 based on frustration and business impact: " & A2)Now column B holds a clean 1 to 10 score. Point conditional formatting at that column with the same MAX rule, and the most urgent ticket highlights itself.
=B1=MAX($B$1:$B$100)The pattern is simple. FITS turns fuzzy quality into a number, and conditional formatting does what it already does well.
When to Use Each
For sales, scores, prices, or any real number, use conditional formatting alone. Reach for =FITS() only when best is qualitative, like the most negative review or the highest-priority lead, where you need a score before you can highlight. Rating rows this way is a categorization job, the same family as tagging and sorting covered in AI formulas for content marketers. If the text you are scoring is messy, clean it first with our normalize data guide. Scoring by meaning is one of the jobs a formula never could do, and the rest are in automating Google Sheets tasks you used to need regex for.
Highlight the Best Row, Not Just the Biggest Number
FITS puts plain-English AI formulas inside Google Sheets. Score rows by meaning, then let conditional formatting flag the winner. Free tier included.