Originally Posted by Colin Legg

I have attached a workbook with two conditional formatting examples.

Example 1

will hightlight E3:M31 if any of the cells have an exact match to any word listed in A3:A20. The conditional formatting formula is:

=OR(E3=$A$3:$A$20)


Example 2

will hightlight E38:M66 if any of the cells contain any word listed in A38:A55. The conditional formatting formula is:

=OR(ISNUMBER(FIND($A$38:$A$55,E38)))

This is case sensitive. If you do not want it do be case sensitive then use SEARCH() instead of FIND().