Conditional Formatting

Copper Contributor

Afternoon,

 

I'm attempting to create conditional formatting in which I ask excel to turn any cells in column BU blue if that string value (I usually work in SPSS so I may be mixing terms here) in that column is the same as, and red if it is different from, its corresponding row in BE. I am using the following formulas:

 

=$BU=$BE and =$BU<>$BE 

 

respectively. Once I've typed it in, however, I receive this error message: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-avoid-broken-formulas-8309381d-33e8-42f6-b889-84ef...

 

Unfortunately, everywhere I turn on the internet is telling me that these are the formulas I'm supposed to use. Is this outdated information? Excel changes it to ="$BU=$BE" and ="$BU<>$BE" and nothing happens to my $BU:$BU column.

 

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

1 Reply

@jennacebelius 

=$BU1<>$BE1
=$BU1=$BE1

These rules for conditional formatting work in my sheet.

conditional formatting.JPG