Hi again,
apologies if Im not explaining myself too well here

Ok, Im about to send over a new file now. I have added in the $ sign as you suggested. If you go to cell B6 and change the selection to "CASE UPDATE" you will see that the adjacent cell turns red - this is correct and what I would like because the user has selected an incorrect option i.e. "Abandoned" is not one of the eligible options for "case update" - so all good. However if you now type some text in the blank "comments" cell D6, the text is also red and I do not want this. The text in the comments column needs to be black all the time, and this only happens when entering text into a blank cell.

I do understand the absolute $ sign and use it regularly in other formula, I just can't get the desired result on this spreadsheet. You'll notice that if you enter text into D6, without first following my above intructions, then the text will be black. So the $ sign works in those circumstances but not if the user makes an incorrect selection first in the "status" or "actions" cells.

Thanks