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I've been trying to create a conditional format formula that looks in a column and finds a series of names and colors them the same color. I want to get this done with one formula instead of a bunch of formulae.
enter image description here

I have tried INDIRECT, VLOOKUP and to work with a statement from How to fill cells based on complicated formula?. I'd like something like this: Excel dynamic conditional formatting based on cell version 2 but am having trouble converting it to text instead of date.

pnuts
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TLDAN
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    Could you provide an _exact_ example of what the sheet would look like with the conditional formatting? Those 2 questions are _very_ different and makes it unclear what you are looking for. – chancea Dec 18 '14 at 20:09
  • does that picture make sense? so like a conditional statement for text contains almost but with multiple names – TLDAN Dec 18 '14 at 20:17
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    Not entirely. So are your 2 search strings _dan_ and _frank joe sarah_? And if so why is _mark_ highlighted? – chancea Dec 18 '14 at 20:21
  • sorry the picture is what I want but I have highlighted them manually to show proof of concept. – TLDAN Dec 18 '14 at 20:23
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    I understand it is a proof of concept, you did well showing your _desired result_ but what is your _input_? What exactly does `B dan : color red frank joe sarah : color red cliff` mean? Are your inputs _dan, frank, joe, sarah_? – chancea Dec 18 '14 at 20:27
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    I think I see, after looking back at the edits you had line breaks, if you want your question formatted with line breaks and such you can highlight the text and click on the **`{}`** button to keep the formatting properly. However I am still wondering why the `sarah vs mark` – chancea Dec 18 '14 at 20:31
  • sorry that input I typed out was my attempt to show you what the cells looked like before I saw I could insert an image. – TLDAN Dec 19 '14 at 11:56
  • chancea thank you so much for all your rapid responses. im so sorry for my confusion. – TLDAN Dec 19 '14 at 12:01

1 Answers1

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If you have two lists of names, say in ColumnA and ColumnI, and wish to highlight those in A that feature in I please select columnA and try applying a Conditional Formatting formula rule of: 

  =MATCH(A1,I:I,0)>0
pnuts
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