You'd need to create (eg) a list in a hidden sheet which defines which
terms are equivalent (do you know all possible values which could
appear here?)

eg:

1 East Midlands Housing
1 Allocations EMHA
1 Arrears EMHA
2 West Midland Housing
2 Allocations WMHA
.....etc

You could then use this list in your validation routine using Find()
and comparing the "index" for each of the three items.
Other than this (having a list of matching entries) it's not easy to
see how else this could be done, unless there is some constant pattern
which relates the three items.

Tim



"thePriest" wrote in message
oups.com...
Not sure this is quite what I'm looking for but I could be weel
wrong.

I need to tell Excel that unless all three cells meet a certain
criteria, then the validation must fail. The problem is that the
single entries for each cell will be different but mean the same
thing.

A1 = East Midlands Housing
A3 = Allocations EMHA
A5 = Arrears EMHA

In this case, the validation would pass because all the entries
relate
to the same company. I need to build this into an array (somehow)
and
compare the cell values with that array?