Good Morning.
I have an Excel spreadsheet that needs to be updated. There could be updates made anywhere on the spreadsheet. I need the cell to change to yellow as modifications are being made. I got as far as copying the entire spreadsheet over to the far right but this is where I am stuck.



I will keep attempting to play until I hear back from someone.
Thank you in advance for your time.
Laurie B.

You're right about copying everything, there HAS to be something to compare to to accomplish this through conditional formatting.

So, let's say everything in column A is duplicated in column AA. As you make edits in column A the values would no longer match and you could highlight the cells via that fact.

So, highlight column A and use this CF setting:

Condition1: Formula Is: =A1<>AA1
Format... Pattern: Yellow

I am not sure what I am doing wrong but it isn't working.
I tested a small area
= Q2<>BF2 CF = Yellow
The applies to doesn' look right. =$Q:$Q

Maybe the primary formula needs to be
=Q1 <> BF1

This is pretty basic, you'll have to tinker with it. Should work.

Thank you for your efforts. I am beyond tinkering at this point. I am using MS Excel 2010. I have 3 columns with drop down list in each column. If there is a change in any of the cells where the engineer changed grapes to oranges, the cell turns yellow. I am copying those 3 columns over to the right. For this example, I am only using one of the three columns. I highlight the column, click on conditional formating, then selecting "New Rule", then selecting "Use a Formula". This is where I can put =$Q$2:$Q$7 <> $AB$2:$AB$7. As I select the Column and Cells, excel adds the dollars signs.
I then select the formatting and the color. This should be easy, I agree.
I then go to my Column Q line 2 and make a change and nothing happens.

Maybe there's an alternate way to do what I am doing? Honestly I've tinkered for hours trying to get this to work.
Thank you again for all your help.
Laurie B.

Hi Laurie B,

these can be little tricky to set up now in 2000 & 2010. Follow these steps and it should work.

1. Select the column that you want to apply the conditional format to.
2. Select Conditional Formatting from the Home Tab
3. Select 'New Rule'
4. Select 'Use a formula to determin which cells to format'
5. add the following formula: =A1<>AA1 (assuming these are the cells that you are comparing). Remove any $ signs using F4 several times if required.
6. Click OK

This should now work for all the cells in that column.

An alternative approach, which doesn't require you to copy the existing data to a new location, is to add a macro like the following to the worksheet's code module:
With this macro, simply changing any cell's contents will change its background colour to yellow.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]