Thanks for the help. I am still a bit confused however.

The spreadsheet will be layed out in a table fasion. the rows will
contain the person's name and their 5 choics (6 cells in total).
There will be about 40 names in a list. I need to programe to look at
the first person and their first choice, check to see if their choice
is available and then allocate them to it (perhaps by highlighting
their choice in green. If there 1st chioce is not available their
second choice would be considered, this would be in the same row but 1
column to the right. Once a person has been allocated to a job, their
other choices become redundant, so the program should move to the next
person (one column below the original). As mentioned before, if a job
has 10 places, the check would need to see if the job has been fullt
allocated. Anyone who has not managed to secure a job would need
their name highligted in red.

I hope I have explained that well enough. I could email a simple copy
of the file to anyone who may be able to help.

kind regards,
Matt