Excel Guru's, help needed !

dirtybeatfreak · 9 Jul 2012 at 12:01

Hey all,

Was wondering if anyone could help with a problem I am having with Excel. I am making a workout calendar for a 90 day program. In each day I would like a drop down list of all the different workouts that are in my program.

Now I know how to create a list using Data Validation which is brilliant. But I would like to have different colour backgrounds for each field in the list and one of the options has a different typeface (wingding so I can have a tick).

So basically, how do I get the items within the list to copy exactly from the source list which has different background colour for each type of workout???

Many thanks in advance for any help given, hope I have explained well enough.

BloomerzUK · 9 Jul 2012 at 12:10

I'd look into conditional formatting. You can use an expression that affects an exact value e.g. 'Sit-ups'

james.miller · 9 Jul 2012 at 12:15

Can't be done. Conditional formatting is an option but it would only affect the underlying cell that the data validation is attached to, and only after you have chosen an entry from the list.

dirtybeatfreak · 9 Jul 2012 at 12:59

Thanks guys. Will look into conditional formatting, maybe that is what I am looking for. I'm pretty certain it can be done as I got the idea (copied) from the official workout calendar that came with the program (which I don't want to use). But I don't seem to be able to see the forumla's they used on each cell anywhere or view/edit data validations to see how they did it. Or do you think they have used some kind of other program/plugin maybe? Lol, I have no idea.

edit; Nah, conditional formatting didn't work. But I learned something new

Double edit!! It works!!, it is indeed conditional formatting. I just did it wrong initially. I originally set it to 'formula is' when I should have used 'is equal to'

Thanks again!!

ian54 · 9 Jul 2012 at 19:23

james.miller said:
Conditional formatting is an option but it would only affect the underlying cell that the data validation is attached to, and only after you have chosen an entry from the list.

I don't think that is quite true, I'm sure you can make conditional formatting dependent on a relative cell value.

james.miller · 10 Jul 2012 at 17:31

ian54 said:
I don't think that is quite true, I'm sure you can make conditional formatting dependent on a relative cell value.

you can yes but i was under the impression from the OP that he wanted each entry on the drop down list to have a different background colour and/or font which you cant do. What i meant was you can conditional format the underlying cell but it will only change after you have chosen from the list. You can of course conditional format a range of cells based on the value of one