Color Fill and Conditional Formatting

Hi,

I'm running Excel 2013 on a Windows 7 Ultimate box, and I have a spreadsheet containing 14 columns and 253 rows. I've made one column, where I can enter a checkmark, so I know that the data in this particular row has been reviewed. I then highlight all 14 cells in the given row, and color fill them, so there's an easy visible in the work already accomplished. The problem is, this gets a bit tedious. What I'd like to implement is the idea, whereby I can simply select the row number from the left-hand column, select Fill Color, and have the color fill stop at column N. I looked online, and it appeared that some sort of conditional formatting might be able to accomplish this, but as I'm not well-versed Excel formatting, I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction.

As well, I also use this same spreadsheet on an iPad Air in Google Drive. I used to open it in Excel, utilizing a plugin, but it seemed a bit wonky, so I switched to Google Docs. The main problem I have is that if the spreadsheet is open, and I need to move to another application, say a web browser, I hit the Home button, which apparently auto-closes the spreadsheet. Does anyone know of a way to keep the spreadsheet active in the background, while maneuvering to another application? I realize that this is not necessarily the section for this question, but I thought that I would ask, regardless. I can always move it to the Mac forums.

Any help w/ either/both of these inquiries would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much!

Jeff