Forum Discussion
conditional formatting based on content of another cell
Select the cells that you want to format conditionally. If more than one, the top left cell should be the active cell in the selection. Note the address of this cell.
On the Home tab of the ribbon. select Conditional Formatting > New Rule...
Select 'Use a formula to determine which cells to format'.
Enter a formula that evaluates to TRUE (or a non-zero number) if the rule should be applied, and to FALSE (or 0) otherwise.
In your example, let's say A2 is the active cell in the selection.
Use the following formula:
=B2<>""
Click Format...
Activate the Fill tab.
Specify the desired color (green in your example).
Click OK, then click OK again.
If you look closely, you'll see that the formula refers to C2 instead of to C3. You should edit the rule and change the formula to =C3<>"Yes"
HansVogelaar , thanks for the feedback. That was an easy bug/typo and cristal clear with the screenshot. However. Even with the right formula and correctly selected cells it is not working how I would like it to. Also I know why. The cells in column C are also formula's of the kind ='vlookup'. It seems like conditional format is not working in that case.
How the value appeared in the cell, by formula or manually, that doesn't matter. Conditional formatting triggers format if formula returns TRUE and skips it in all other cases.
On your screenshot values are only Yes or $N/A. Thus formula =C3<>"Yes" never returns TRUE. It returns FALSE or error, #N/A. Thus conditional formatting skips all cells.
You may modify the formula as
=IFERROR( C3<>"yes", TRUE)when it triggers formatting in case of error or if the value is not "yes"
