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I have multiple spreadsheets in a single google doc and I am trying to use information from one spread sheet in a conditional formula. For example, if the document contained two spreadsheets (sheet_A and sheet_B), I am trying to create a conditional formula such that if there is text in sheet_A cell A2, then sheet_B cell A2 fills a certain color.

I have tried Apply to range = B2 and creating a custom formula =sheet_A!A2<>"". However, I keep getting an error that this is an invalid formula. I can use =sheet_A!A2 to pull the value from the other sheet and the formula =A2<>"" works for conditional formatting to change the color within the same sheet, I just can't seem to get these two functions to act together.

Many thanks for any thoughts on what I am doing wrong here.

Rubén
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user4670961
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  • Possible duplicate of [Conditional Formatting from another sheet](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25735025/conditional-formatting-from-another-sheet) – Rubén Jun 04 '16 at 19:21

2 Answers2

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For some reason conditional formatting requires the INDIRECT function.

Try this as your custom formula:

=INDIRECT("sheet_A!A2")<>""

Chris Hick
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You could use istext or len > 0 for your conditional also:

=LEN(INDIRECT("'Sheet2'!A2"))>0

OR 

=ISTEXT(INDIRECT("'Sheet2'!A2"))
Aurielle Perlmann
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