Excel question

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I use spreadsheets as glorified calculators but don't really use them to full advantage. One thing I've struggled with is whether you can make the results of an arithmetic or logical function interact with the "meta" functions that are available. Can you, for instance, create an IF statement so that the result alters the size of that cell or another one, or its fill colour or font etc?

[GrandMasterFox]

I use spreadsheets as glorified calculators but don't really use them to full advantage. One thing I've struggled with is whether you can make the results of an arithmetic or logical function interact with the "meta" functions that are available. Can you, for instance, create an IF statement so that the result alters the size of that cell or another one, or its fill colour or font etc?

What version of excel you're using?

There's an optional for conditional formating.
It's not in the formula, it's an external menu option (using excel 2003 here)
Essentially you can setup a condition like "if the value of this cell is greater than 3 than change its color to green, if not change its color to red"

[bobhope2112]

The short answer is no. Cell formatting is not exposed to the formulaic part of Excel. Macros, on the other hand, can make all sorts of adjustments to a spreadsheet through an extensive object model. So, if you want to programmatically reformat a spreadsheet, or just some of its cells, that's entirely doable.

Conditional formatting has already been mentioned. It is a sort of a midpoint between the cloistered domain of the cellular formula, and the wide-open object model.

Maybe it would help if you would describe what you're trying to do?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Thanks for the replies. I'm away from home at the moment and can't remember my exact version. It's on a Mac, but I can't remember whether I got it with my 3yo machine or bought it as standalone software.

At it's simplest, I have long lists of stock codes and I'd like to apply a test to them then highlight cells that have yielded a certain result by filling the cell with a colour.

So, if it was possible within formulae what I'd want is the equivalent of =IF(A1>0,Fill Red,). Since I can't do it in formulae I'd want the simplest route to achieve the same task.

Thanks for helping.

[Zep]

Yep, can be done easily, as noted above. Look for Conditional Formatting.

Example: http://www.contextures.com/xlcondFormat01.html

[varwoche]

Conditional formatting has already been mentioned. It is a sort of a midpoint between the cloistered domain of the cellular formula, and the wide-open object model. The condition can include a reference to a cell.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Back from hols now and able to look at "conditional formatting".

Many thanks, I think that does just what I need.

It is always said that as a last resort one should RTFM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM), but in the absence of TFM, I'm always grateful to JREF.