Your life will be lots easier if you used a separate column for that New
indicator.
You could format the entire column as Bold, Red if New is the only thing that
can go in the cells (or the cell is empty).
But if you want to change just the last 3 characters of a string in the cell,
you can use a macro.
It would do the same thing as
selecting the cell
selecting just the NEW characters in the formula bar
format|cells|and change the color to red.
In code it would look something like:
Option Explicit
Sub testme()
Dim FoundCell As Range
Dim FirstAddress As String
Dim wks As Worksheet
Set wks = Worksheets("Sheet1")
With wks
FirstAddress = ""
With .Cells
Set FoundCell = .Find(What:="*New", _
after:=.Cells(.Cells.Count), _
LookIn:=xlFormulas, _
LookAt:=xlWhole, _
SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
MatchCase:=False)
If FoundCell Is Nothing Then
'do nothing, it wasn't found
MsgBox "Nothing found!"
Else
FirstAddress = FoundCell.Address
Do
'change the font color for the last 3 characters
With FoundCell.Characters _
(Start:=Len(FoundCell.Value) - 2, Length:=3).Font
.ColorIndex = 3
.Bold = True '????
End With
'look for the next one
Set FoundCell = .FindNext(after:=FoundCell)
If FirstAddress = FoundCell.Address Then
'at the first address
Exit Do
End If
Loop
End If
End With
End With
End Sub
This line:
With .Cells
looks at the entire worksheet.
You can limit it to a specific range with something like:
With .Range("A:A")
(for column A)
And by using What:="*New" and xlwhole in the .find statement, xl will look for
something that ends with NEW.
If you're new to macros:
Debra Dalgleish has some notes how to implement macros here:
http://www.contextures.com/xlvba01.html
David McRitchie has an intro to macros:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm
Ron de Bruin's intro to macros:
http://www.rondebruin.nl/code.htm
(General, Regular and Standard modules all describe the same thing.)