I actually went back and got it to work. I even found that the cells correctly retained their formatting when I re-sorted the data.

Now my question is, how do you copy/paste the conditional formatting rules into other rows? The dollar sign stops the formula from dynamically changing when you paste it into another row. So that means having to painfully replace each row number on every line.

To clarify, each cell in the A column will require multiple rules. I can't remove the dollar sign to drag the rules down. Copy/pasting doesn't work without editing the row numbers in the Edit Rule dialog. Using the formatting paintbrush just copied the attributes of whatever background color was in the cell.

Is there an easier way? Thanks!