Just a couple of pointers:

To get code for a particular colour/pattern, just use the recorder (Tools,
Macro, Record New Macro) and tidy as necessary.

To colour according to a multiple selection, use a loop combined with If, eg:

Sub MultipleFormat()
Dim myCell As Range
For Each myCell In Selection
If myCell.Value = [...] Then
Cells(myCell.Row, 1).Font.ColorIndex = [...]
ElseIf myCell.Value = [...] Then
[...]
Else
[...]
End If
Next
End Sub

Hope that helps.

"Dave M" wrote:

I've got a list of 37 condition statements which i've combined into a
valdiated drop down list, but I need the cell adjacent to the list to dispaly
one of 37 unique colour a pattern combinations to allow mutiple selections on
the sheet to be easily read to assess commonality. Any sugestions as to how I
do this, I'm pretty new to VB in Excel2003.

Simplest case is an 8Rx2C matrix with column 1 being the output in terms of
shading and patterns and column 2 being the drop down selection.

Thanks for any help
Dave