Conditional Formatting in Excel

[Jaded]

Working on a spreadsheet to show kids' marks, with grades of A, B, C, D, E, F.

I'm trying to set up conditional formatting so that it will show me whether they've improved or not each week - is there a way of doing this? As an example, if Aaron Andrews got A, A, B, B, A, A, A over 7 weeks, can I get the formatting to change colour on the 1st B and then when he gets an A again?

[ads25]

Yeah mate, hit the Format menu and click on Conditional Formatting then just follow the prompts. Its pretty straight forward to work out once your in the menu.

If you need any help just sing out

[Galronix]

Not sure it can be done with letters.

At most times conditional formatting is done with numbers and dates. At work we use this to see if certain jobs have been done on time, are over time or not started.

If you can work the letters to numbers, i.e. A = 1, I'm sure it can work. If not just make the grades numbers.

[GotaFancy?]

Thijnk it works fine with letter

A

A

B

B

A

A

A

[Jaded]

Ummm... okay, I'm lost and I thought I was quite good at it! GaF, or Ads, can one of you two kind gents give me a dummies' guide as to how to produce the effect GaF got? (which is just what I wanted!)

[GotaFancy?]

Ok - Assuming what you saw in my post in in cells A1..A7.

Put the cursor in cell A2, then goto FORMAT and select CONDITIONAL FORMATTING.

You will now have a "Conditional Formatting" Dialogue box.

Under condition 1, the first box should read "Cell Value is". Change the second box to "not equal to" and in the 3rd box put A1 (if you select it, make sure it is not Anchored - i.e. NOT $A$1)

Now click on the format button and choose the formatting you want applied when this condition is met (for the Yellow background, select the "Patterns" tab and click the yellow).

Click ok and ok. If A2 is equal to A1, you wont see anything yet (change A2 to check its working).

Now just copy the cell A2 and "Paste Special" "Formats" into cells A3..A7 and you should have exactly the same as I showed earlier

[Jaded]

I think I'm following the instructions okay but it's not having it...

[GotaFancy?]

Ok - I made a mistake I think....

Make sure the condition is =A1 and NOT ="A1"

Does that make a differnce?

[Jaded]

It does - fantastic! Thanks mate