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Bryon Smedley's avatar
Bryon Smedley
Copper Contributor
Oct 22, 2018
Thank you for your reply. I understand what the colors are and how they repeat, my question lies in which variables get which colors; i.e. variable's order within a function, function order, function depth within the formula, etc... I know it's an odd question, but I have to assume that someone at some point mapped all of these rules out in order to program them into Excel.
  • JKPieterse's avatar
    JKPieterse
    Silver Contributor
    Oct 23, 2018

    As Ingeborg says: there is no logic other than a simple left-to-right order of appearance in the formula, with one exception: repeating references have the same colour as their first appearance.

    Note that the colors are different for other versions of Excel. I picked up the colors from my Excel 2016. Those appear to be less intense than the colors of Excel 2010.

  • IngeborgHawighorst's avatar
    IngeborgHawighorst
    MVP
    Oct 23, 2018

    Hello,

     

    I'm not sure that this is documented anywhere. My experience is that the colour coding in the formula references is strictly on a left to right basis. The first reference to a cell, range or named range will be blue, the next one red, and so on. If a reference is used more than once in a formula, each mention of that reference will get the same colour as the first mention of that reference. If cell addresses are used interchangeably with range names, they will get the same colour assigned. 

     

     

    Does that help?

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