I'm puzzled why I can't get this to work. In Column A (spanning literally hundreds of Rows) I have a series of numbers ranging between 1 and 9 (in no particular order). I want to conditionally format Cells B1 through, say, Z500, such that if a number 2 shows up in Column A for any of those 500 Rows then the Rows (B through Z) shade as blue; if a number four shows up in Column A, then shade those Rows orange, etc. So, I highlighted all of the Cells from B1 to Z500, selected "Use a formula to determine which cells to format" and entered (well, tried to) this formula: =IF($a1=2), thinking that would format all Rows with a 2 in Column A blue. (I also tried =IF($A1="2") . . . same problem.) Excel doesn't like that, and I get the "There's a problem with this formula" message. What am I doing wrong and what do I need to change in the formula? Thanks for the assistance!