conditional formatting

[niyrho]

I want a cell to change color if the value is the same as the cell to the right of it. I know how to do this one cell at a time but it will take years to finish the project this way. Is there a way to set that up in a whole column at once?

 

[p45cal]

Presumably you're using Conditional Formatting?
Select all of the cells you want to conditionally format, then, noting which is the active cell It has a slightly different highlight and is often the top left cell of the range if that's where you tarted selecting from as you dragged the mouse), enter the conditional formatting formula as if you were doing it for just that cell, but remove the $ symbols from the formula, or at least the $s before row numbers.
The whole selected range will now have the conditional formatting you want.

 

[manmah]

Another way would be to take out the $ of your original format.. Copy the cell which you have placed the conditional format in, highlight all the cells you wish to copy it to and paste special-formats.

 

[niyrho]

I'm using excel 2010. The conditional formatting in that one is a nightmare. Seems like they dumbed it down to the point of complete failure. It only seems to work if I use the dumbed down part, can't set it up manually or select my own colors. And it won't let me remove the $ from the cell reference

 

[manmah]

I'm using 2007, but am quite shocked they've changed it to that extent.. do you not get the option to select a rule type and then use a formula to determine which cells to format???

 

[Peter_SSs]

I'm using excel 2010. The conditional formatting in that one is a nightmare. Seems like they dumbed it down to the point of complete failure. It only seems to work if I use the dumbed down part, can't set it up manually or select my own colors. And it won't let me remove the $ from the cell reference

I don't have any of those issues in 2010. Is this (done in Excel 2010) not what you want?

Excel Workbook
	E	F
1
2	abc	34
3	23	23
4	xx	xx
5	5	dfs
6	6
7	4	4
CF

Cells with Conditional Formatting
Cell	Condition		Cell Format	Stop If True
E2	1. / Formula is =E2=F2	Abc