Conditional Formula BASED on Color?

[Tarissa]

I have been searching for hours now and while I can find tons and tons of information on how to do conditional formatting to CHANGE a color, I can't find what I'm looking for.

Is it possible to write a formula where the color of the cells background (or text, I'm not too picky) determines what happens?

I have four groups of students in my classes. I was hoping to be able to color code them as I graded them and then have a formula which would arrange them by group (based on the color I made the cell) on a second sheet.

Is this possible?

 

[PaddyD]

hi - welcome to the board.

Possible in principle, but not advisable, because built in functions don't care about colour, so you give up almost all the functionality that would make it worth doing this in excel.

Better to add an extra column with the grade, then use standard conditional formatting etc on the new grade column.

 

[Quattropil]

this is exactly the question i have been seeking. although PaddyD you say "possible in principle" you do not actually provide the answer. do you know the formula, for interests sake? would love to give it a try

 

[PaddyD]

you could, for example, use the technique described here:

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20611

..to return cell fill colour index with a defined formula like:

=GET.CELL(38,OFFSET(INDIRECT("RC",FALSE),0,-1))

...& then feed that result to subsequent formulas.