Conditional formating without using condition formatting men

[kdev]

In either Excel 2000 (or possibly even 97) is was possible to display the result of an IF statement without using the conditional formatting tab. Something along the lines of:

=IF(A1=B1,[red]C1,IF(A1=B2,[blue]C2,C3))

So the above example would in theory set the value of cell C1 (and make the text red) where A1 is equal to B1, or the value of C1 (and make the text blue) where A1 is equal to B2.

There used to be a manual entry in the Excel help but I can no longer find it. It did used to be quite buried though. I am currently using Excel 2003 having upgraded from XP to see if 2003 had this feature more prominently.

So my question is does anyone know what the correct syntax for this is? Conditional formatting is not suitable as it only supports 3 conditions whereas I need 5. I can't honestly believe that (a) I am dreaming and this feature never existed or (b) Microsoft took it out!

Thanks![/code]

 

[RalphA]

I would love to find out more about this special IF application. I use Excel 97. But, if you accept using VBA, then go to this site, and view Tazguy37's reply:

http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?t=127832&highlight=cell+color