Excel 2010 - conditional formatting not working

[Goatman88]

Office 2010 Pro on Windows 7 64bit

A user has been complaining that conditional formatting doesn't work in Excel 2010 on certain files. The only way he can get it to work is if he saves as an older format (xls).

He found one possible link is that the problem files are always exports from Access.

Has anybody ever seen this?

 

[SkipVought]

Hi,

The export data may appear to be numerical, but actually be TEXT, often DATE values.

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE![/sub]

 

[xlbo]

seconded!

what kind of tests are theconditional formatting doing?

If they are looking up dates or performng calcs on numerical values this is more than likely the culprit

Rgds, Geoff

We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colours but they all live in the same box.

Please read FAQ222-2244 before you ask a question

 

[SkipVought]

Geoff,

When you answered this thread, you were, with respect to me, "down under!" [sub]But not now, so where does this lead?[/sub] Hope that all is well with you "down under!"

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE![/sub]

 

[Goatman88]

Everyone,

Good Point!

I'll check and see if indeed the numerical values are being exported as text. I know he's doing < or > tests on the numbers.

Odd though that when he saves it as the older format (xls) it works and that he never had this problem with Excel 2007.

 

[Mouldheels]

Those pesky programmers are always playing those sort of tricks on us excel users by ouputting obvious numerical fields as text of with spaces to pad them out to make them look pretty in reports.