Cond. Format Based on Ref. Cell

[MechEng2005]

Hello All,

I have a spreadsheet with different projects listed. The spreadsheet has columns for "Due Date" and "Progress". I would like the cell for "Due Date" to have a red background if the project is past today's date AND the Progress is not listed as "Complete." However, while I can write an if-statement to evaluate when this is true, I am having trouble with the conditional formatting.

First, I would like to use the formatting for the whole column, not just selected cells. Will conditional formatting accept a range of "B:B" for column "B" or do I need to reference a specific cell? Will it automatically choose the cell from column B in the correct row? If I am on row 3, I obviously want it to look in B3 to see if the progress is "Complete."

Also, I seem to have trouble pointing the conditional formatting to a column other than the column being formatted. I want to look in column B for if the job is complete, but the formatting is applied in column A.

Any advice is appreciated!

-- MechEng2005

 

[handleman]

The bad news is that you won't be able to do it for the entire column. The good news is that you can write it for one cell, then copy it and paste special Formats down the entire column and the cell references will update.

In the conditional formatting dialog, you will need to change the dropdown to "Formula Is", and then do

=AND((B3<>"Complete"),A3<TODAY())

assuming your date is in column A.

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

 

[MechEng2005]

Thanks Handleman!