Conditional Formatting

[mclambchop]

Hello,

I have a spreadsheet with two columns, one has an area name in and the second column has the branch name. Some areas could have 5 branches and some could have 15 branches. I would like to format each row based on the area name. So if its area 1 then say a light grey, if area 2 then a light blue, if area 3 revert back to a light grey, area 4 revert back to light blue and so on.

Does anyone have any idea on the best way to do this?

 

[Special-K99]

"So if its area 1 then say a light grey, if area 2 then a light blue, if area 3 revert back to a light grey, area 4 revert back to light blue and so on."

You are implying you are only ever going to use 2 colours and that the colour is dependent on whether the area is an odd or even number.

So just use two formulas in the CF

=MOD(A1,2)=0
and
=MOD(A1,2)=1

to distinguish between odd and even numbers
where A1 is the area number.

 

[mclambchop]

The areas actually have names, certain parts of the country so are text fields. I only need to use two colours, its just to help visually see the difference where one area stops and another starts, just to help focus the user with lots of data being shown

 

[Special-K99]

Only way I can think of is to create a table of of area names and numbers 1 or 2
Perform a lookup based on the name and the 1 or 2 will indicate which colour.

 

[Fluff]

Maybe something like
=AND($A2<>"",MOD(SUMPRODUCT(--($A$1:$A1<>$A$2:$A2)),2))