Conditional format of one cell based on contents of another cell

Question

Preparing list of appointments for visitors with time for each. There are four possible status categories for visitors based on projected activity and whether they have shown up or not. (A Group Scheduled, A Group Showed, B Group Scheduled, B Group Showed). I've created the calendar in iCal with different calendars, then accessed that through Bento iCal Events. Bento adds the column with name of calendar from iCal. Info is now in Numbers. (iWorks 09)
It shows Title, Start Date, Location, Calendar. I'm adding more fields using Lookup in Numbers drawing on entire data base brought over from Bento. I'm trying to get what info I need, but none that I don't, so the form isn't too crowded and busy.
I would like to be able to conditionally format the Time column based on the contents of the Calendar column. If successful, the color of the Time column would tell me all I need to know about visitor status, and I could hide the Calendar column and clean up the form.
I hope I've described it adequately. Can this be done, and if so, how?
Thanks! Have a great Thanksgiving!

Answer 1

jpcranch wrote:
Does it work to format two cells based on contents of one of them?
Conditional formatting of a cell depends on the contents of that individual cell, compared with another value, so no.
But you could use a two-table approach.
In general terms, the technique is to:
• make the original table's cell fill transparent,
• Add a second table to the sheet,
• Set the second table to copy the control values into a column of cells,
• Select the cells in that column of Table 2,
• Apply conditional formatting rules for each possible control value (see below)
• Set the text opacity for these cells to 0 (full transparency),
• Click on Table 2 in the sidebar, then use (shift and) the arrow keys to slide Table 2 behind Table 1 to align the highlighted cells with the cells to appear highlighted in Table 1.
• Set the colour of the cell borders on table 2 to none.
Using the information you gave regarding the calendar column, you'll need four rules for conditional formatting of this column. All are of the same format:
Text contains: A Group Scheduled
With the text changed to match each possible entry.
Regards,
Barry
BTW: by changing the width of the formatted column on table 2, you can appear to highlight as many columns as you wish on Table 1.