Changing a cell color to reflect positive or negative total

[Alex Vega]

How do I add a formula to make a cell color (red for negative, green for
positive) reflect a positive or negative total when adding/subtracting 2
different cells.

i.e. cell A43-A49, total sits in cell E49. If total is negative, then cell
E49 turns red; if positive, cell A49 turns green.

-A43 is a total of 40 previous cells added while A49 is the total of 4
previous cells added.

Thanks.

Alex

 

[Bob Phillips]

Use conditional formatting.

See http://www.contextures.com/xlCondFormat01.html

--
HTH

Bob

(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)

 

[Jim Cone]

Or use a custom number format...

[Green]$#,##0_);[Red]($#,##0)
--
Jim Cone
San Francisco, USA
http://www.realezsites.com/bus/primitivesoftware



"Alex Vega" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
How do I add a formula to make a cell color (red for negative, green for
positive) reflect a positive or negative total when adding/subtracting 2
different cells.
i.e. cell A43-A49, total sits in cell E49. If total is negative, then cell
E49 turns red; if positive, cell A49 turns green.
-A43 is a total of 40 previous cells added while A49 is the total of 4
previous cells added.
Thanks.
Alex

 

[Alex Vega]

Thank you for responding.

Alex

 

[AdamV]

Just a general point - colouring cell backgrounds can make the content
unreadable, expecially if printed in monochrome (ie greyscale).
Changing the colour for the text can be more useful, using a custom format
as suggested perhaps. However, this does not lend itself to skim reading for
things (eg to quickly spot the negatives), nor is it any use for people with
some forms of colour blindness or again for monochrome printing. A couple of
options to help with this:
- use a conditional format to make one of the kinds of text bold as well (eg
the negative values)
- use a cond. format to add a cell border.
- include 'standout' text characters in the custom format to make cells
stand out eg [Green]* $#,##0_);[Red]"LOSS! "($#,##0)