Conditional Formatting?

[CTinfojunkie]

I just discovered this forum and I love it! Thanks to all who contribute. I work at a local radio station here in CT. We have local elections coming up next week and I am working on an Excel spreadsheet that we will use to input the data and display it to our anchors and analysts during election night coverage. I am trying to find a way to get Excel to display a check mark or change the color of each winner's name in each race. The only fields I have are candidate name and vote total. Further complicating matters, there can be multiple winners for some races. For example, the top 3 vote-getters our of a slate of 6 may be elected. Would conditional formatting do the job? I would love to hear your suggestions. Thank you in advance!
-CTinfojunkie

 

[Smitty]

Welcome to the Board!

The easiest/fastest method might be with a combination of Data-->Validation + Conditional Formatting.

Select a blank range of cells in a column to the right of the candidates, then goto Data-->Validation-->Allow-->List-->Source-->"1,2,3" (No spaces or quotes".

You can then select the candiate range and goto Format-->Contitional Formatting-->Formula is-->=$A1=1 (where $A1 represents the first Data Validation cell), Format-->Pattern-->Select a color. Add two more conditions, one for =2 and one for =3.

Hope that helps,

Smitty

 

[Tazguy37]

Welcome to MrExcel Board!

Here's a sample sheet I made:

MainWorkbook.xls
	A	B	C	D
1	Name	Vote Total
2	John	14
3	Jim	10
4	Mary	13
5	Sue	6
6	David	8
7	Lisa	11
Sheet2

Using Conditional Formatting in Column B:
FormulaIs:
=AND(RANK(B2,$B$2:$B$1000)>=1,RANK(B2,$B$2:$B$1000)<=3)

And adjust your range in Column B, and choose your format. Hope that helps!

EDIT: Smitty beat me to the punch; I had to actually go do some work.

 

[CTinfojunkie]

Thanks

Thank you! This helps a great deal. You people know your stuff!

-CTinfojunkie