Excel 2003 – Change Cell Color Without VBA, Using Conditional Formatting.

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2012.02.10

(NOTE: This article is currently just a stub … )

So, this is what I was up to tonight.  I researched and learned the following techniques:

• Excel data validation list from named range in another worksheet
• Build drop-down menu in Excel
• How to delete duplicate rows using in-place filtering
• Keyboard shortcut for entering and opening drop-down menu in an Excel cell (Hint: <ALT+down arrow> to fully open menu)
• Is it possible to do a case select statement (aka: switch statement) in Excel’s native formula apparatus?  Short answer – No.  To do something like that you have to use VBA.  … Incidentally, I’m falling asleep otherwise I’d have done VBA tutorials, but that’ll just have to wait for another blog entry.
• And finally … How to change background cell color without using VBA in Excel 2003

Now, folks, you may be wondering “Why would the CodeSlayer go to all the trouble?  What fancy project does HE have brewing?”  Well, get ready to assuage your thirst for answers because I’m about to show you what all this learning was for…. And here it is (see fig. 1.0):

fig 1.0 - Music Spreadsheet with Moods

To accomplish one of goals of sorting all my music pages that are sitting around in various piles, I decided to make an Excel spreadsheet.  I designed this spreadsheet fairly simply.  Notice it has columns to indicate song name, artist, whether I can sing it, play it on guitar, have the lyrics, or have the tablature.  I’m using a basic binary tally method (either box has a “x” indicating “yes” or it is empty, indicating “no”).  But, you’ll also notice a column called “Mood”.

Recently I’ve started to think that perhaps by continuing to sing songs like “She f***in Hates Me” or “I’m a Creep”, that I’m, by the Law of Attraction and Law of Concentration drawing those types of life experiences to me, which is emphatically NOT what I want!  Thus, I’m endeavoring to not only figure out what songs I have in my possession (to keep from wasting time re-downloading the tab or lyrics), but I’m also attempting to identify what songs express the type of vibes I want to be sending out and attracting back to me.  In this case, “Positive” and “Attractive” classifications are desired.

I’ve completed about 80 songs so far, and it’s been a work in progress, with a bit of layout refactoring here and there.  But overall, it’s been an enjoyable task so far… There’s just something completely fulfilling about seing something through to completion.  This is the type of task I believe famed motivational speaker Brian Tracy (who I’ve been listening to religiously on the way to work as an excellent alternative to the uber-negative, snarky talk radio personalities) might classify as “C” priority level, I am doing as much as I can each weekend until it’s done.  That amounts to about 4-6 hours a week.  My goal is full completion within 3 calendar weeks.  Then I’ll need to use about as much time for the 2nd phase, which is scanning all my papers to pdf files.

So anyway guys and gals, that’s the main project I worked on in free time at home tonight and I just wanted to share that with you.

Many blessings and Prosperity,

- CodeSlayer

Sources:

• Excel Data Validation List from Another Workbook
  (Contextures.com)
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/delete-duplicate-rows-from-a-list-in-excel-HA001034626.aspx
• http://www.keyxl.com/aaab2f6/9/Microsoft-Excel-spreadsheet-keyboard-shortcuts.htm
• http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080717082728AAOlAJ0
• http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/questions/cond_format1.php

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